EX-LIBRIS 


LOUISE  ARNER  BOYD 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 


GIFT  OF 


Louise  A.   Boyd 


A  MESSAGE 
TO  GARCIA 
and  Thirteen 
Other  Things 


AS  WRITTEN  BY  FRA 
ELBERTUS  AND  DONE 
INTO  A  BOOK  BY  THE 
ROYCROFTERS  AT 
THEIR  SHOP  WHICH 
IS  IN  EAST  AURORA 
NEW  YORK,  A.  D.  NINE 
TEEN  HUNDRED  ONE 


Copyright  1898,  1899,  1900,  1901,  by  Elbert  Hubbard. 


nua. 


INDEX 

1  A  Message  to  Garcia         ....  9 

2  The  Ex-Libris  Collector  ....  21 

3  The  Social  Exodus 33 

4  As  to  the  Country 43 

5  Old  Zeke  Crosby 55 

6  The  Brotherhood  of  Jiners       ...  67 

7  About  Advertising  Books          ...  77 

8  Consecrated  Lives 89 

9  The  Beecham  Habit          .         .         .         .  101 

10  The  Bishop's  Voice           ....  in 

11  The  Kindergarten  of  God           .         .         .  119 

12  Advantages  and  Disadvantages       .         .  127 

13  The  Better  Part 147 

14  The  Crying  Need 161 


067 


GIFT 


A  MESSAGE 
TO    GARCIA 


CREDO 

I  believe  in  the  Motherhood  of  God. 
I  believe  in  the  blessed  Trinity  of  Father, 
Mother  and  Child. 

I  believe  that  God  is  here,  and  that  we  are 
as  near  Him  now  as  we  ever  shall  be.  I  do 
not  believe  He  started  this  world  a-going 
and  went  away  and  left  it. 
I  believe  in  the  sacredness  of  the  human 
body,  this  transient  dwelling  place  of  a  liv 
ing  soul,  and  so  I  deem  it  the  duty  of  every 
man  and  every  woman  to  keep  his  or  her 
body  beautiful  through  right  thinking  and 
right  living. 

I  believe  that  the  love  of  man  for  woman, 
and  the  love  of  woman  for  man,  is  holy ; 
and  that  this  love  in  all  of  its  promptings 
is  as  much  an  emanation  of  the  Divine 
Spirit,  as  man's  love  for  God,  or  the  most 
daring  hazards  of  human  mind. 
I  believe  in  salvation  through  economic, 
social  and  spiritual  freedom. 
I  believe  John  Ruskin,  William  Morris, 
Henry  Thoreau,  Walt  Whitman  and  Leo 
Tolstoy  to  be  Prophets  of  God,  and  they 
should  rank  in  mental  reach  and  spiritual 

i 


insight  with  Elijah,  Hosea,  Ezekiel  and 

Isaiah. 

I  believe  we  are  now  living  in  Eternity  as 

much  as  we  ever  shall. 

I  believe  that  the  best  way  to  prepare  for  a 

Future  Life  is  to  be  kind,  live  one  day  at 

a  time,  and  do  the  work  you  can  do  the 

best,  doing  it  as  well  as  you  can. 

I  believe  there  is  no  devil  but  fear. 

I  believe  that  no  one  can  harm  you  but 

yourself. 

I  believe  that  we  are  all  sons  of  God  and 

it  doth  not  yet  appear  what  we  shall  be. 

I  believe  in   freedom — social,   economic, 

domestic,  political,  mental,  spiritual. 

I  believe  in  every  man  minding  his  own 

business. 

I  believe  that  men  are  inspired  to-day  as 

much  as  men  ever  were. 

I  believe  in  sunshine,  fresh  air,  friendship, 

calm  sleep,  beautiful  thoughts. 

I  believe  in  the  paradox  of  success  through 

failure. 

I  believe  in  the  purifying  process  of  sorrow, 

and  I  believe  that  death  is  a  manifestation 

of  Life. 

I  believe  there  is  no  better  preparation  for 
ii 


a  life  to  come  than  this :  Do  your  work  as 
well  as  you  can,  and  be  kind. 
I  believe  the  Universe  is  planned  for  good. 
I  believe  it  is  possible  that  I  will  make 
other  creeds,  and  change  this  one,  or  add 
to  it,  from  time  to  time,  as  new  light  may 
come  to  me. 


in 


N  all  this  Cuban  business 
there  is  one  man  stands 
out  on  my  memory  like 
Mars  at  perihelion  ^ 
When  war  broke  out  be 
tween  Spain  &  the  United 
States,  it  was  very  nec 
essary  to  communicate 
quickly  with  the  leader  of  the  Insurgents. 
Garcia  was  somewhere  in  the  mountain 
fastnesses  of  Cuba — no  one  knew  where. 
No  mail  nor  telegraph  message  could  reach 
him.  The  President  must  secure  his  co 
operation,  and  quickly  «g£  What  to  do  ! 
Some  one  said  to  the  President,  tl  There 
is  a  fellow  by  the  name  of  Rowan  will  find 
Garcia  for  you,  if  anybody  can." 
Rowan  was  sent  for  and  given  a  letter  to 
be  delivered  to  Garcia. 
How  "  the  fellow  by  the  name  of  Rowan  " 
took  the  letter,  sealed  it  up  in  an  oil-skin 
pouch,  strapped  it  over  his  heart,  in  four 
days  landed  by  night  off  the  coast  of  Cuba 
from  an  open  boat,  disappeared  into  the 
jungle,  and  in  three  weeks  came  out  on 
the  other  side  of  the  Island,  having  trav 
ersed  a  hostile  country  on  foot,  and  deliv 
ered  his  letter  to  Garcia,  are  things  I  have 

9 


A  MESSAGE 
TO  GARCIA 


A  MESSAGE  no  special  desire  now  to  tell  in  detail.  The 
TO  GARCIA  point  I  wish  to  make  is  this:  McKinley 
gave  Rowan  a  letter  to  be  delivered  to 
Garcia  ;  Rowan  took  the  letter  and  did  not 
ask  "  Where  is  he  at?  " 
By  the  Eternal!  there  is  a  man  whose 
form  should  be  cast  in  deathless  bronze 
and  the  statue  placed  in  every  college  of 
the  land.  It  is  not  book-learning  young 
men  need,  nor  instruction  about  this  and 
that,  but  a  stiffening  of  the  vertebrae  which 
will  cause  them  to  be  loyal  to  a  trust,  to 
act  promptly,  concentrate  their  energies : 
do  the  thing — "  Carry  a  message  to  Gar 
cia."  «J*  General  Garcia  is  dead  now,  but 
there  are  other  Garcias. 
No  man  who  has  endeavored  to  carry  out 
an  enterprise  where  many  hands  were 
needed  but  has  been  well-nigh  appalled  at 
times  by  the  imbecility  of  the  average  man 
— the  inability  or  unwillingness  to  concen 
trate  on  a  thing  and  do  it.  Slip-shod  assist 
ance,  foolish  inattention,  dowdy  indiffer 
ence,  &  half-hearted  work  seem  the  rule ; 
and  no  man  succeeds,  unless  by  hook  or 
crook,  or  threat,  he  forces  or  bribes  other 
men  to  assist  him  ;  or  mayhap,  God  in  his 
goodness  performs  a  miracle,  and  sends 
10 


him  an  Angel  of  Light  for  an  assistant.  A  MESSAGE 
You,  reader,  put  this  matter  to  a  test :  You  TO  GARCIA 
are  sitting  now  in  your  office— six  clerks 
are  within  call.  Summon    any  one   and 
make  this  request :  "  Please  look  in  the 
encyclopedia  and  make  a  brief  memoran 
dum  for  me  concerning  the  life  of  Cor- 
reggio." 

Will  the  clerk  quietly  say,  "Yes  sir,"  and 
go  do  the  task  ? 

On  your  life  he  will  not.  He  will  look  at 
you  out  of  a  fishy  eye  and  ask  one  or 
more  of  the  following  questions : 
Who  was  he  ? 
Which  encyclopedia  ? 
Where  is  the  encyclopedia  ? 
Was  I  hired  for  that  ? 
Don't  you  mean  Bismarck  ? 
What 's  the  matter  with  Charlie  doing  it? 
Is  he  dead? 
Is  there  any  hurry  ? 

Shan't  I  bring  you  the  book  and  let  you 
look  it  up  yourself? 
What  do  you  want  to  know  for  ? 
And  I  will  lay  you  ten  to  one  that  after  you 
have  answered  the  questions,  &  explained 
how  to  find  the  information,  and  why  you 
want  it,  the  clerk  will  go  off  and  get  one 

ii 


A  MESSAGE  °f  ^e  other  clerks  to  help  him  try  to  find 

TO  GARCIA  Garcia  —  and  then  come  back  and  tell  you 

there  is  no  such  man.  Of  course  I  may 

lose  my  bet,  but  according  to  the  Law  of 

Average  I  will  not. 

Now  if  you  are  wise  you  will  not  bother 
to  explain  to  your  "assistant"  that  Cor- 
reggio  is  indexed  under  the  C's,  not  in  the 
K's,  but  you  will  smile  sweetly  and  say, 
"  Never  mind,"  and  go  look  it  up  yourself. 
«gr  And  this  incapacity  for  independent  ac 
tion,  this  moral  stupidity,  this  infirmity  of 
the  will,  this  unwillingness  to  cheerfully 
catch  hold  and  lift,  are  the  things  that  put 
pure  Socialism  so  far  into  the  future.  If  men 
will  not  act  for  themselves,  what  will  they 
do  when  the  benefit  of  their  effort  is  for  all  ? 
A  first-mate  with  knotted  club  seems  nec 
essary  ;  and  the  dread  of  getting  "  the 
bounce  "  Saturday  night,  holds  many  a 
worker  to  his  place.  Advertise  for  a  ste 
nographer,  and  nine  out  of  ten  who  apply 
can  neither  spell  nor  punctuate — and  do 
not  think  it  necessary  to. 
Can  such  a  one  write  a  letter  to  Garcia  ? 
'*  You  see  that  book-keeper,"  said  the  fore 
man  to  me  in  a  large  factory. 
"  Yes,  what  about  him  ?  " 

12 


"  Well,  he  's  a  fine  accountant,  but  if  I  'd  A  MESSAGE 
send  him  up  town  on  an  errand,  he  might  TO  GARCIA 
accomplish  the  errand  all  right,  and  on  the 
other  hand,  might  stop  at  four  saloons  on 
the  way,  and  when  he  got  to  Main  Street, 
would  forget  what  he  had  been  sent  for." 
3$,  Can  such  a  man  be  entrusted  to  carry  a 
message  to  Garcia  ? 

We  have  recently  been  hearing  much 
maudlin  sympathy  expressed  for  the 
"  down-trodden  denizen  of  the  sweat 
shop  "  &  the  "  homeless  wanderer  search 
ing  for  honest  employment,"  and  with  it 
all  often  go  many  hard  words  for  the  men 
in  power. 

Nothing  is  said  about  the  employer  who 
grows  old  before  his  time  in  a  vain  at 
tempt  to  get  frowsy  ne'er-do-wells  to  do 
intelligent  work;  and  his  long,  patient 
striving  with  "help"  that  does  nothing 
but  loaf  when  his  back  is  turned.  In  every 
store  and  factory  there  is  a  constant  weed- 
ing-out  process  going  on.  The  employer  is 
constantly  sending  away  "help"  that 
have  shown  their  incapacity  to  further  the 
interests  of  the  business,  and  others  are 
being  taken  on.  No  matter  how  good  times 
are,  this  sorting  continues,  only  if  times 

13 


A  MESSAGE  are  hard  and  work  is  scarce,  the  sorting 
TO  GARCIA  is  done  finer  —  but  out  and  forever  out  the 
incompetent  and  unworthy  go.  It  is  the 
survival  of  the  fittest.  Self-interest  prompts 
every  employer  to  keep  the  best  —  those 
who  can  carry  a  message  to  Garcia. 
I  know  one  man  of  really  brilliant  parts 
who  has  not  the  ability  to  manage  a  busi 
ness  of  his  own,  and  yet  who  is  absolute 
ly  worthless  to  any  one  else,  because  he 
carries  with  him  constantly  the  insane 
suspicion  that  his  employer  is  oppressing, 
or  intending  to  oppress  him.  He  cannot 
give  orders  ;  and  he  will  not  receive  them. 
Should  a  message  be  given  him  to  take  to 
Garcia,  he  would  probably  at  once  refer  to 
you  as  a  greedy,  grasping  Shylock,  and  tell 
you  to  "Take  it  yourself  !"  He  regards 
all  business  men  as  rogues,  and  constantly 
uses  the  term  "commercial  "  as  an  epithet. 
To-night  this  man  walks  the  streets  look 
ing  for  work,  the  wind  whistling  through 
his  thread-bare  coat.  No  one  who  knows 
him  dare  employ  him,  for  he  is  a  regular 
fire-brand  of  discontent.  He  is  impervious 
to  reason,  and  the  only  thing  that  can  im 
press  him  is  the  toe  of  a  thick-soled  No.  9 


14 


Of  course  I  know  that  one  so  morally  de-  A  MESSAGE 
formed  is  no  less  to  be  pitied  than  a  phys-  TO  GARCIA 
ical  cripple :  but  in  our  pitying,  let  us  drop 
a  tear,  too,  for  the  men  who  are  striving 
to  carry  on  a  great  enterprise,  whose  work 
ing  hours  are  not  limited  by  the  whistle, 
and  whose  hair  is  fast  turning  white 
through  the  struggle  to  hold  in  line  dowdy 
indifference,  slip-shod  imbecility,  and  the 
heartless  ingratitude,  which,  but  for  their 
enterprise,  would  be  both  hungry  and 
homeless. 

Have  I  put  the  matter  too  strongly  ?  Pos 
sibly  I  have ;  but  when  all  the  world  has 
gone  a-slumming  I  wish  to  speak  a  word 
of  sympathy  for  the  man  who  succeeds — 
the  man  who,  against  great  odds,  has 
directed  the  efforts  of  others,  and  having 
succeeded,  finds  there  's  nothing  in  it: 
nothing  but  bare  board  and  clothes.  I  have 
carried  a  dinner  pail  and  worked  for  day's 
wages,  and  I  have  also  been  an  employer 
of  labor,  and  I  know  there  is  something  to 
be  said  on  both  sides.  There  is  no  excel 
lence,  per  se,  in  poverty;  rags  are  no  rec 
ommendation  ;  and  all  employers  are  not 
rapacious  and  high  handed,  any  more  than 
all  poor  men  are  virtuous.  My  heart  goes 

15 


A  MESSAGE  out  to  the  man  who  does  his  work  when 
TO  GARCIA  the  "boss"  is  away,  as  well  as  when  he 
is  at  home.  And  the  man,  who,  when 
given  a  letter  for  Garcia,  quietly  takes  the 
missive,  without  asking  any  idiotic  ques 
tions,  and  with  no  lurking  intention  of 
chucking  it  into  the  nearest  sewer,  or  of 
doing  aught  else  but  deliver  it,  never  gets 
"laid  off,"  nor  has  to  go  on  a  strike  for 
higher  wages.  Civilization  is  one  long  anx 
ious  search  for  just  such  individuals.  Any 
thing  such  a  man  asks  shall  be  granted. 
He  is  wanted  in  every  city,  town  and 
village — in  every  office,  shop,  store  and 
factory.  The  world  cries  out  for  such : 
he  is  needed,  and  is  needed  badly — the 
man  who  can  carry  a  message  to  Garcia. 


16 


THE  EX-LIBRIS 
COLLECTOR 


IFE   in   this  world  is  a-  A  MESSAGE 
collecting,  &  all  the  men  TO  GARCIA 
&  women  in  it  are  collec 
tors.  The  only  question 
is,  what  will  you  collect? 
Most  men  are  intent  on 
collecting  dollars  o^o^s^ 
Their  waking  hours  are 


,0  taken  up  with  inventing  plans,  methods 
and  schemes  whereby  they  may  secure 
dollars  from  other  men.  To  gather  as 
many  dollars  as  possible  and  to  give  out 
as  few  is  the  desideratum.  But  when  you 
collect  one  thing  you  always  incidentally 
collect  others.  The  fisherman  who  casts 
his  net  for  shad  always  secures  a  few 
other  fish,  and  once  in  a  while  a  turtle, 
which  enlarges  the  mesh  to  suit  and  gives 
sweet  liberty  to  the  shad.  To  focus  ex- 

o  clusively  on  dollars  is  to  secure  jealousy, 
fear,  vanity  and  a  vaulting  ambition  that 
may  claw  its  way  through  the  mesh  and 

{o  let  your  dollars  slip  into  the  yeasty  deep. 
«g£  Ragged  Haggard  collects  bacteria  ; 
while  the  fashionable  young  men  of  the 

,0  day,  with  a  few  exceptions,  are  collecting 
headaches,  regrets,  weak  nerves,  tremens, 

0  paresis — death.  Of  course  we  shall  all  die 

21 


A  MESSAGE  (I  '11  admit  that),  and  further,  we  may  be  a 
TO  GARCIA  long  time  dead  (I  '11  admit  that),  and  fur 
ther,  we  may  be  going  through  the  world 
for  the  last  time — as  to  that  I  do  not  know 
— but  while  we  are  here  it  seems  the  part 
of  reason  to  devote  our  energies  to  that 
which  brings  as  few  heart-pangs  to  our 
selves  and  others  as  possible.  We  are  here, 
and  some  day  we  must  go,  and  surely  we 
would  like  to  depart  gracefully. 
Now,  I  do  not  know  exactly  why  men  col 
lect  book-plates.  But  I  think  I  have  traced 
out  a  very  little  of  the  psychology  of  col 
lecting.  And  first  I  would  call  your  atten 
tion  to  the  fact  that  no  one  ever  went  off, 
secretly  and  by  stealth,  and  collected 
book-plates,  as  a  miser  hoards  and  gloats 
over  his  gold. 

The  collector's  cast  of  mind  is  totally  dif 
ferent  from  that  of  the  miser.  The  miser 
loves  the  gold  for  its  own  sake — the  col 
lector  loves  a  book-plate  for  what  it  sug 
gests.  In  other  words,  he  does  not  love  a 
book-plate  at  all.  He  may  think  he  does, 
but  he  does  n't ;  he  holds  it  in  solution  and 
when  the  time  is  ripe  he  sheds  it  as  a 
snake  sheds  its  skin ;  whereas  the  miser 
hoards  till  he  dies,  and  dying,  clutches  «§£ 

22 


Witness,  if  you  please,  Mr.  James  Fraser  A  MESSAGE 
Gluck  collecting  autographs  and  such  tri-  TO  GARCIA 
fles  industriously  and  intensely  for  years, 
paying  out  thousands  of  dollars  and  then 
one  fine  day  presenting  the  whole  collec 
tion  to  the  Buffalo  Library.  And  this  while 
he  was  a  young  man. 
Dozens  of  such  cases  could  be  cited  to 
prove  that  the  mania  sits  lightly,  and  like 
the  whole  material  world  is  of  small  ac 
count  to  the  man  who  can  get  off  at  a 
distance  and  take  a  good  look  at  it. 
No  collector  ever  evolved  the  craze  alone ; 
he  is  exposed  and  catches  it.  Where  you 
see  one  man  collecting,  around  the  corner 
you  '11  find  another.  The  psychic  basis  of 
collecting  is  human  sympathy,  and  not  a 
mere  lust  for  possession  ^  You  collect 
because  someone  you  admire  collects, 
although  I  do  not  ask  you  to  confess  this 
before  men.  You  exchange  plates  and  at 
the  same  time  you  exchange  courtesy, 
kindliness  and  mutual  good  will.  Having 
the  book-plate  of  a  collector  you  are 
pledged  to  that  man  by  a  tie  which  is  very 
gentle,  yet  very  strong.  He  does  not  dic 
tate  to  you,  nor  rob  you  of  your  time,  nor 
intrude  his  personality  upon  you,  but  from 

23 


A  MESSAGE  out  of  the  unseen  now  and  again  comes  a 
TO  GARCIA  cheery  message  (and  a  book-plate)  and 
you  send  back  good  cheer  and  kindly 
greetings  (and  a  book-plate,  for  some  one 
has  sent  you  duplicates). 
And  thus  the  circle  grows  until  all  'round 
the  world  you  count  your  friends  and 
brothers,  held  together  by  the  mystic 
bond,  which  binds  men  who  love  the  same 
things  and  are  engaged  in  like  pursuits. 
Then  beyond  this  you  are  linked  to  the 
past  by  the  plates  you  own  of  men  now 
dust,  and  you  know,  too,  all  the  men  who 
have  wrought  &  traced  in  lines  of  beauty, 
and  thought  and  felt  and  suffered  and  en 
joyed.  You  know  them  all — you  know 
their  successes  and  defeats,  their  hopes 
and  sorrows. 

You  do  not  say  that  Holbein  and  Hogarth 
were,  you  say  they  are,  for  you  have  their 
work — they  are  immortal.  And  so  you 
confuse  the  dead  and  living  in  one  fairy 
company,  and  although  you  detect  vary 
ing  degrees  of  excellence,  for  none  do  you 
hold  contempt,  of  none  are  you  jealous — 
none  do  you  envy. 

From  them  you  ask  nothing,  upon  you 
they  make  no   demands,  save  that  their 
24 


friendship  shall  be  frank,  free,  unselfish  &  A  MESSAGE 
unsullied  (g^  TO  GARCIA 

It  is  not  at  all  necessary  to  meet  a  col 
lector  face  to  face  in  order  to  hold  sweet 
converse.  By  their  plates  ye  shall  know 
them.  And  so  I  have  avoided  meeting  my 
dear  friends,  more  than  once,  that  the 
delicacy  of  the  relationship  should  not  be 
disturbed.  But  sometimes  I  break  the  rule, 
and  being  in  New  Haven  not  long  ago  I 
called  on  Mr.  W.  F.  Hopson.  In  the  yard 
back  of  his  house  Hopson  has  a  pretty 
little  studio,  made  of  matched  pine,  and 
the  whole  thing  must  have  cost  him  fifty 
dollars.  The  light  comes  in  from  the  roof, 
as  it  does  in  the  Church  of  the  Madeleine 
and  the  Chapel  of  Pere  la  Chaise,  save  for 
a  beautiful  north  window  which  was  evi 
dently  pinched  by  Hopson  from  some 
Italian  chapel,  although  he  swears  differ 
ently  \/0 

Together  we  called  on  Mr.  George  Dud 
ley  Seymour  and  Mr.  Everett  E.  Lord. 
Seymour  has  posters  and  china  and  book 
plates  and  brocades,  all  representing  the 
beautiful  handiwork  of  men  long  dead. 
Lord  has  a  collection  of  prints  which  cost 
him  ten  thousand  dollars,  gathered  over 

25 


A  MESSAGE  the  space  of  twenty  years.  But  the  point  I 
TO  GARCIA  wish  to  make  is  that  as  the  treasures 
were  brought  forth  and  shown,  the  com 
ments  revealed  the  names  of  Woodbury, 
Bolles,  Allen,  Dodge,  Shir-Cliff,  Wood- 
worth,  Ellsworth,  Gobeille,  Humphreys, 
Mack,  French,  Rhead,  and  all  those  other 
choice  spirits,  who  are  my  friends,  and 
whose  presence  in  my  thoughts  takes  the 
bitterness  out  of  life  and  gives  a  solace 
when  all  my  hopes  seem  gone.  The 
friends  of  these  men  are  my  friends,  too ; 
so  we  were  as  brothers. 
Then  the  next  day  I  went  up  to  Hartford 
and  saw  Mr.  Charles  Dexter  Allen,  who 
has  an  absurd  head  of  hair  and  many 
book-plates  ;  and  then  on  to  Boston  where 
I  called  on  Mr.  John  P.  Woodbury,  who 
has  a  long  white  beard  and  a  grace  and 
dignity  which  make  you  think  of  Michael 
Angelo's  Moses.  Mr.  Woodbury  has  a 
great  collection  of  French's  book-plates, 
and  others  galore,  the  most  valuable  col 
lection  of  "The  Compleat  Angler  "  in  the 
world,  and  extra-illustrated  books  &  first 
editions  until  't  would  make  you  dizzy  to 
tell  you  of  them.  And  whom  did  we  talk 
about  as  we  looked  at  the  treasures  ?  I  '11 
26 


tell  you — we  talked  of  Bolles,  Stone,  Shir-  A  MESSAGE 
Cliff,  Bering,  Allen,  Dodge,  Woodworth,  TO  GARCIA 
Ellsworth,  Gobeille,  Rhead,  Humphreys, 
French,  and  all  those  other  friends  who 
are  both  his  and  mine.  Mr.  Woodbury  is 
nearly  the  Ideal  Collector  : — he  has  lived 
his  three  score  and  ten,  but  his  eye  is  as 
bright  as  a  boy's,  his  complexion  as  fair  as 
a  baby's,  and  he  carries  with  him  the  per 
fume  of  the  morning  and  the  lavish  heart 
of  youth  ^ 

And  so  a  fad  which  gives  joy  without 
headache,  peace  without  stupor,  &  friends 
who  are  not  rivals,  is  worth  cultivating ; 
at  least  I  think  so.  Its  basis  is  human  sym 
pathy,  &  its  excuse  for  being — book-plates. 


27 


THE  SOCIAL 
EXODUS 


N  all  of  the  many  grow-  A  ME 5 
ing    cities    of    America  TO  GARCIA 
there  is  taking  place  an 
eager  exodus  over  a  cer 
tain  social  dead  line,  that 
marks  the  rich  from  the 
poor.  When  a  business 
man  attains  a  certain  in- 
speculator   "strikes   it   rich,"  a 


come,   a 

manufacturer  secures  a  monopoly  or  any 
impecunious  son  of  earth  is  struck  by  light 
ning  and  receives  a  legacy,  straightway  he 
moves  his  household  to  The  Other  Side  of 
Town  *=& 

And  as  for  this  man's  family,  when  they  go, 
the  scenes  that  knew  them  once  know  them 
no  more  forever.  They  do  not  say  good-bye 
— the  friends  they  once  had  are  no  longer 
theirs ;  the  neighbors  with  whom  they  used 
to  chat  over  the  gate  read  of  them  in  the 
Society  Events  Column,  but  they  never  see 
them.  The  grocer  who  once  was  so  friendly 
to  them  is  dead ;  the  jolly  butcher  is  for 
gotten — all  are  gone — faded  and  swallowed 
up  in  the  misty  past,  that  past  so  full  of 
work  and  struggle  and  difficulty,  that  past 
of  youth  and  hope ;  and  the  end  for  which 
they  toiled  and  longed  has  come.  St.  Peter's 

33 


golden    gates    have    opened:    they   have 
TO  GARCIA  moved  to  the  Other  Side. 

Men  who  have  incomes  of  four  thousand 
dollars  or  more,  in  Buffalo,  make  hot  haste 
to  live  on  Delaware  Avenue ;  in  Pittsburg 
it  is  the  East  End ;  in  Cincinnati,  Walnut 
Hills;  in  Cleveland,  Euclid  Avenue;  in 
Chicago,  Hyde  Park ;  in  Boston,  Common 
wealth  Avenue ;  in  New  York,  Up-Town. 
«g£  And  in  these  social  migrations  there  is 
something  pitiful,  wondrous  pitiful ;  for  the 
man  who  goes  can  never  return  of  his  own 
free  will ;  and  to  be  forced  back  by  fate  is 
to  suffer  a  humiliation  that  is  worse  than 
disgrace  that  comes  through  crime.  When 
a  rich  man,  say  in  Albany,  Syracuse  or 
Toledo,  loses  his  money  and  his  family  has 
to  "  come  down,"  the  sympathetic  souls  of 
earth  shed  tears  for  the  glory  that  is  gone. 
We  tell  how  he  has  had  to  give  up  all — he 
gave  up  his  horses,  his  billiard  tables,  his 
solid  plate  :  he  discharged  his  gardener,  his 
coachman,  his  butler.  He  is  now  keeping 
books  for  twenty  dollars  a  week  and  his 
wife  is  doing  her  own  work :  and  we  relate 
how  his  children  are  now  compelled  to 
attend  the  public  school  «g-  Ah,  me !  Life  is 
grievous,  and  our  days  are  full  of  trouble ! 
34 


«^  On  questioning  a  good  many  men  who  A  MESSAGE 
have  taken  part  in  the  Social  Exodus,  I  TO  GARCIA 
find  that,  Adam-like,  the  responsibility  of 
the  change  is  thrown  entirely  on  the  wom 
an  :  "  My  wife  was  dissatisfied  and  we  had 
to  go."  Not  once  could  I  ever  get  a  man  to 
acknowledge  that  the  question  of  pride,  the 
desire  to  parade  his  success,  or  the  hope  of 
a  better  social  position  for  his  daughters 
ever  weighed  in  the  scale.  But  then  a  man 
is  seldom  aware  of  the  motives  that  move 
him  :  we  deceive  ourselves  and  hide  behind 
specious  pleas  of  many  hues. 
%C  The  women  of  the  Exodus  tell  me  that 
the  reason  they  moved  to  Commonwealth 
Avenue  was  because  the  sewerage  was 
imperfect  in  the  old  home,  the  water  was 
bad,  the  air  full  of  smoke,  or  the  neighbors' 
children  rude  4&  And  in  various  instances 
these  worthy  mothers  following  the  exam 
ple  of  their  husbands,  unloaded  the  respon 
sibility  on  the  children.  "When  Mayme 
came  home  from  Wellesley  she  could  not 
stand  it  here,"  or  "  When  George  got  back 
from  Harvard  he  found  the  society  so 
awfully  dull."  && 

And  right  here  let  us  note  this  prevalent 
fact :  the  first  effect  of  College  life  is  often 

35 


A  MESSAGE  a  desire  to  separate  from  the  old  compan- 
TO  GARCIA  ions — a  drawing  away  from  the  plain  and 
simple ;  a  separation  from  the  mass  and  a 
making  of  cliques ;  an  unfitting  for  life's 
commonplace  duties  and  the  forming  of  a 
condition  that  makes  riches  a  necessity 
and  their  loss  a  calamity. 
That  much  of  our  so-called  "  culture  "  has 
been  bought  at  the  price  of  manhood,  no 
one  who  knows  men  can  deny.  But  when 
matters  go  far  enough  in  any  one  direction 
the  pendulum  swings  back  and  they  cure 
themselves :  and  now  behold  the  College 
Settlement !  That  the  men  and  women  of 
wealth  and  culture  who  are  deliberately 
making  their  homes  among  the  poor  are  as 
one  to  ten  thousand,  compared  with  the 
"sudden  rich"  who  are  making  frantic 
efforts  to  get  away  from  all  smirching  con 
tact  with  plain  people,  there  is  no  doubt ; 
but  the  claim  that  money  gives  the  right  to 
monopolize  beautiful  things  of  earth,  and 
the  gentle  qualities  of  heart,  no  longer  goes 
unchallenged.  The  culture  that  is  kept  close 
smells  to  high  heaven :  only  running  water 
is  pure  &&!> 

And  it  is  a  pleasing  fact  that  although  the 
men  of  the  Social  Exodus  lay  the  blame 
36 


all  on  woman,  yet  the  credit  of  the  return  A  MESSAGE 
move  must  be  given  to  her.  Hull  House  is  TO  GARCIA 
primarily  woman's  work. 
"Where  is  your  home?"  I  asked  Miss 
Jane  Addams  a  short  time  ago. 
"  My  home  is  at  Three  Hundred  Thirty- 
five  South   Halsted    Street — my  work   is 
there,  and  there  I  expect  to  live  and  die," 
was  the  quiet  answer, 
«g£  The  number  of  earnest  women,  highly 
cultured  in  the  best  sense,  who  are  deeply 
interested  in  social  questions,  is  most  en 
couraging.  And  when  that  strong  &  gentle 
woman,  Charlotte  Perkins  Stetson,  delib 
erately  casts  her  lot  with  the  lowly  &  tells 
us  that  poor  people  often  have  a  deal  more 
culture  and  true  charity  than  we  who  con 
sider  ourselves   rich,  she  voices  a  truth 
that  should  be  passed  down  the  line. 
Have  your  beautiful  things,  of  course — 
why  not  ?  encourage  the  workers  in  art,  & 
use  your  money  to  decorate  and  beautify, 
but  do  not  think  that  these  things  will  ben 
efit  you  if  you  join  the  Social  Exodus  and 
make  hot  haste  to  put  distance  between 
yourself  and  those  who  are  less  fortunate. 
Owners  of  art  must  build  no  spite  fence ! 
Show  the  marbles  that  fill  your  niches  and 

37 


A  MESSAGE  the  canvases  that  glorify  your  walls  to 
TO  GARCIA  those  who  seldom  see  such  sights ;  give 
your  education  to  those  who  need  it, 
your  culture  to  those  who  have 
less,  &  you  double  your  treas 
ure  by  giving  it  away. 


AS  TO  THE 
COUNTRY 


HERE  is  an  idea  in  the 
minds  of  many  to  the  ef-  TO  GAR 
feet  that  the  country  is 
an  idyllic  place  to  bring 
up  children.  Far  away 
from  the  busy  haunts  of 
men,  out  of  the  mad  rush 
and  tumult,  clear  of  the 


dust  and  din  of  factories,  and  beyond  the 
reach  of  vice  and  depravity — there  will  we 
let  the  little  souls  fresh  from  God  develop 
and  expand.  The  singing  birds  and  nodding 
wild  flowers  shall  be  their  companions  and 
into  their  hearts  shall  be  absorbed  the  sun 
shine  and  the  sounds  that  make  melody 
through  the  branches  ^  Oho ! 
I  do  not  wish  to  appear  boastful  of  our 
town,  but  I  '11  hazard  the  challenge  that 
there  are  a  dozen  boys  hanging  around  the 
Railroad  Station  in  East  Aurora  who  can 
give  pointers  in  depravity  and  general  cus- 
sedness  to  any  set  of  city  youngsters  you 
Can  produce.  And  East  Aurora  is  far  more 
civilized  now  than  it  ever  was  before. 
Last  summer  a  fond  mother  from  Cleve 
land  sent  her  two  sons  to  an  Uncle  here, 
that  they  might  rusticate  for  a  month  on 
the  Old  Farm  and  get  a  healthful  glimpse 

43 


A  MESSAGE  into  pastoral  life  and  bucolic  ways  $,  They 

TO  GARCIA  got  it. 

One  of  these  boys  was  ten  and  the  other 
twelve  years  of  age.  They  were  not  espe 
cially  brilliant  boys,  but  evidently  had  re 
ceptive  minds,  for  when  they  got  home 
their  mother  soon  discovered  that  they  had 
mastered  the  entire  Underground  Vocabu 
lary  of  the  Rural  Deestrick. 
The  first  burst  of  disillusionment  came 
when  the  younger  boy,  in  a  proud  wish  to 
show  his  accomplishments,  designated  cer 
tain  necessary  functions  of  life  with  a  pict 
uresque  realism  that  made  his  mother  gasp 
for  breath,  and  caused  his  father  to  throw 
a  Double  Arab. 

In  the  meantime  the  elder  lad  had  busied 
himself  decorating  the  bath-room  after  a 
hay-mow  pattern  devised  and  suggested  by 
his  erstwhile  friend,  the  Hired  Man. 
This  proficiency  in  art  and  language  caused 
the  mother  to  make  investigations,  and  the 
result  was  that  she  called  the  laundress  and 
they  stripped  those  two  boys  to  the  buff. 
They  scrubbed  them  outside  with  Pearline, 
doped  them  inside  with  sulphur,  soaped 
out  their  mouths,  rubbed  Red  Precipitate 
ointment  into  their  scalps,  and  burned  every 
44 


vestige  of  clothing  they  had  worn  on  their  A  MESSAGE 
vacation  to  the  innocent  environment  of  TO  GARCIA 
Th'  Old  Homestead. 

East  Aurora  is  not  a  peculiar  place— it  is 
just  a  plain  representative  New  York  State 
village.  New  England  villages  with  their 
libraries  &  varied  industries  rank  higher, 
but  as  you  go  West,  say  through  Indiana  & 
Illinois,  you  will  find  art  and  letters  culti 
vated  around  the  railroad  stations  more 
assiduously,  and  vocabularies  a  trifle  more 
intense  (g^ 

We  have  the  Hoodlum  with  us,  but  not 
quite  so  well  rounded  as  the  representatives 
to  be  seen  in  the  villages  of,  say,  five  hun 
dred  inhabitants,  in  Ohio. 
At  present,  a  stranger  arriving  here  wear 
ing  a  high  silk  hat  would  be  comparatively 
safe  from  mud  balls,  but  a  few  years  ago 
when  an  artist  came  out  here  sketching, 
and  set  up  his  White  Umbrella  from  Mex 
ico  in  a  pasture  lot,  we  pelted  his  stuck-up 
circus  tent  arrangement  with  stones  and 
set  the  dogs  on  him. 

This  would  probably  be  the  fate  of  any 
similar  presumptuous  person  in  any  of  the 
small  towns  about  here,  save  where  the 
owner  of  the  White  Umbrella  was  a  very 

45 


A  MESSAGE  large  man  and  muscular.  The  other  way  to 
TO  GARCIA  do  would  be  to  secure  the  friendship  of 
some  influential  citizen  in  the  place  who 
would  act  as  sponsor  and  body-guard. 
Hoodlumism  springs  naturally  into  being, 
like  everything  else,  when  the  conditions 
are  ripe.  The  right  conditions  are  idleness 
and  a  lack  of  incentive  toward  the  higher 
life  o^f^f 

They  say  people  talk  gossip  in  the  country, 
but  gossip  is  only  lack  of  a  worthy  theme. 
Having  nothing  else  to  talk  about,  folks 
turn  and  talk  of  each  other ;  and  if  they 
rend  characters  and  rip  reputations  up  the 
back,  it  is  only  a  sign  of  mental  poverty. 
Get  a  man  interested  in  poetry,  art,  sociol 
ogy,  and  he  talks  of  these.  Set  him  to  work 
at  some  useful  employment  that  calls  into 
being  his  higher  faculties — the  love  of  har 
mony,  proportion,  color — and  his  mind  will 
revolve  around  these  things,  and  of  these 
will  he  converse. 

Hoodlumism  betokens  the  vacant  mind  and 
idle  hands.  The  boy  may  have  glimmering 
desires  to  do  something  useful  and  be 
somebody,  but  he  lacks  direction — there  is 
none  to  take  lead.  He  craves  excitement, 
and  as  the  railroad  station  is  the  busy  cen- 
46 


ter  he  gravitates  there  "  to  see  the  train  A  MESSAGE 
come  in." 

He  gets  acquainted  with  the  tramps  who 
hang  around  the  water  tank  and  pumping 
engine  room. 

Soon  he  times  the  Way  Freight  and  cur 
ries  favor  with  conductor  and  brakeman  by 
helping  unload  boxes,  bales  and  barrels.  He 
learns  to  climb  over  freight  cars,  to  set  the 
brake,  to  board  a  train  in  motion. 
He  is  allowed  to  ride  up  the  road  to  the 
next  station.  He  gets  off  there,  and  while 
waiting  for  a  train  to  take  him  back,  goes 
over  to  a  farm  house  &  strikes  the  farmer's 
wife  for  a  hand-me-out,  as  he  has  seen  the 
tramps  do  $&  He  gets  it. 
And  lo !  it  is  an  epoch  in  his  life — he  has 
learned  that  he  can  travel  free,  and  get  food 
without  work.  At  heart  he  is  a  tramp  and  a 
criminal  —  he  takes  something  without 
thought  of  giving  an  equivalent. 
The  next  move  is  by  hook,  crook  and  stealth 
to  take  the  thing  without  going  through  the 
formality  of  asking  for  it.  If  the  farmer's 
wife  refuses  the  food,  why  just  locate  the 
chickens  that  roost  in  the  trees,  and  at  night 
go  get  them ! 

"  The  world  owes  every  man  a  living." 

47 


A  MESSAGE  In  the  commodity  of  manhood,  the  villages 
TO  GARCIA  supply  the  best  and  worst.  Those  with  am 
bition  and  aspiration  seek  a  field  where 
their  powers  can  find  play ;  the  rest  for  the 
most  part  hang  upon  the  fringe  of  hood- 
lumism  j& 

Governor  Rollins  of  New  Hampshire,  has 
recently  lamented  the  absence  of  religion  in 
our  rural  communities  —  he  says,  "the 
country  towns  are  drifting  into  savagery 
and  hoodlumism  for  the  lack  of  religion." 
Governor  Rollins  has  mental  strabismus  or 
he  would  know  that  excitation  of  the  emo 
tional  nature  is  no  cure  for  the  disease 
which  he  specifies. 

Every  hoodlum  in  East  Aurora  "  comes  to 
Jesus"  every  winter.  When  there  is  more 
excitement  at  the  Baptist  Church  than  there 
is  at  the  Railroad  Station,  the  Baptist 
Church  catches  him.  And  when  for  a  few 
weeks  his  emotions  are  played  upon  he 
swings  off  so  far  in  one  direction  that  when 
he  goes  back,  as  back  he  must,  the  mo 
mentum  carries  him  a  long  way  to  't  other 
side  4& 

The  cure  for  hoodlumism  is  manual  train 
ing,  and  an  industrial  condition  that  will 
give  the  boy  or  girl  work — congenial  work 
48 


fair  wage,  and  a  share  in  the  honors  of  A  ME* 
making  things.  Salvation  lies  in  the  Froebel  TO  GARCIA 
methods  carried  into  manhood.  You  en 
courage  the  man  in  well  doing  by  taking 
the  things  he  makes,  the  product  of  hand 
and  brain,  and  pay  him  for  them,  supply  a 
practical,  worthy  ideal  and  your  hoodlum 
spirit  is  gone  and  gone  forever.  You  have 
awakened  the  man  to  a  Higher  Life — the 
life  of  art  and  usefulness — you  have  bound 
him  to  his  race  and  made  him  brother  to 
his  kind.  The  world  is  larger  for  him — he  is 
doing  something — doing  something  useful : 
making  things  that  people  want. 
All  success  consists  in  this :  you  are  doing 
something  for  somebody — benefiting  hu 
manity  ;  and  the  feeling  of  success  comes 
from  the  consciousness  of  this. 
Interest  a  person   in   useful  employment 
and  you  are  transforming  Chaos  into 
Cosmos  *&  Blessed  is  the  man 
who  has  found  his  work. 


49 


OLD  ZEKE 
CROSBY 


LD    ZEKE   CROSBY,  t 
who  as  every  one  knows,  TO  GARCIA 
lives  out  on  the  Mile- 
Strip,  three  miles  north 
west  of  East  Aurora,  was 
down  to  see  me  yester 
day  &&> 
Zeke  often  drops  in  to 


make  me  a  friendly  call,  but  the  particular 
thing  that  brought  him  this  time  was  my 
little  item  about  lawyers  in  a  late  number 
of  the  PHILISTINE.  It  pleased  the  old 
man  immensely,  and  his  approval  pleased 
me,  for  Zeke  has  a  son  who  is  a  lawyer — 
and  a  good  one.  The  young  man,  who  lives 
in  Chicago,  has  made  a  decided  success  of 
his  profession,  and  has  the  confidence  of 
all  who  know  him. 

It  would  have  been  a  very  natural  pro 
ceeding  on  the  part  of  old  Zeke  to  have 
denounced  my  screed  on  lawyers  as  libel- 
ous — and  all  that.  But  he  did  not.  On  the 
contrary  he  had  anticipated  that  my  item 
would  bring  down  on  my  head  a  torrent  of 
abuse,  not  only  from  the  local  bar,  but 
from  adjacent  towns  as  well. 
And  so  that  I  might  be  properly  fortified, 
my  friend  had,  with  much  labor  and  great 

55 


A  MESSAGE  pains,  written  out  his  experience  with  two 

TO  GARCIA  Buffalo  lawyers. 

Old  Zeke  expects  me  to  print  his  statement 
entire  with  names  and  dates,  times  and 
places.  And  when  he  reads  this  I  trust  he 
will  pardon  me  for  not  doing  so,  for  even 
to  print  the  truth  is  regarded  under  certain 
conditions  as  libelous.  Very  briefly  stated, 
Zeke's  complaint  No.  i  is  that  in  1897  he 
sold  two  loads  of  hay  to  a  Buffalo  lawyer, 
who  is  also  very  well  known  in  East  Au 
rora.  Hay  was  low,  only  $7.50  a  ton,  but 
he  had  to  sell  it  in  order  to  get  money  to 
pay  taxes  *=&& 

After  the  hay  was  delivered  the  bill  was 
presented,  and  the  lawyer  said  he  would 
mail  a  check.  He  has  n't  mailed  the  check 
yet.  Since  the  hay  was  sold,  hay  has  been 
up  to  $14.00  a  ton. 

The  lawyer  now  laughs  at  Zeke  when  the 
old  man  asks  him  for  the  money,  and  de 
clares  his  coachman  paid  for  the  hay  when 
it  was  delivered. 

Case  No.  2  is  a  matter  of  butter,  eggs, 
chickens  and  vegetables  supplied  to  a  law 
yer's  family  during  a  space  of  two  years. 
The  footings  are  over  three  hundred  dol 
lars,  with  seventy-five  dollars  paid  on 
56 


account.  Old  Zeke  knew  the  people  were  A  MESSAGE 
rich,  and  had  delayed  putting  in  a  bill  be-   TO  GARCIA 
cause  he  wanted  the  money  all  at  one  time 
to  lift  a  mortgage.   He  fully  expected  it 
would  be  paid  upon  request,  but  now  the 
bill  is  repudiated. 

They  declare  the  eggs  he  supplied  were 
bad,  the  turnips  woody,  the  potatoes  rotten 
&  that  all  of  his  spring  chickens  were  hens 
old  enough  to  vote.  When  the  old  man  at 
tempted  to  defend  his  good  name  he  was 
ordered  from  the  premises,  and  soundly 
abused  by  the  lawyer's  wife.  On  refusing 
to  go  the  woman  rang  for  a  stable-man  and 
ordered  the  man-servant  to  kick  Old  Zeke 
into  the  street.  The  hostler  took  Zeke  by  the 
arm  and  induced  him  to  go,  and  when  in 
the  alley,  he  gave  the  old  man  a  dollar  out 
of  his  own  pocket,  apologizing  for  his  share 
in  the  matter,  and  declared  by  way  of  ex 
tenuation,  that  he  just  had  to  make  a  show 
of  pulling  Old  Zeke  out  or  lose  his  job. 
Well,  what  does  all  this  prove  ?  Nothing 
at  all,  save  that  two  men,  who  are  acci 
dentally  lawyers,  have  treated  a  generous 
and  kindly  old  man  with  gross  injustice. 
Lawyers  are  not  all  bad  and  all  dead-beats 
are  not  lawyers,  but  some  lawyers  are 

57 


A  MESSAGE  rogues  and  all  lawyers  are  officers  of  the 
TO  GARCIA  Court  —  servants    of   the    Goddess,  who, 
being  blind,  never  sees  anything  of  their 
rascality  z~& 

To  us  who  are  young  and  tough  and  mix 
ing  in  the  world,  Old  Zeke's  troubles  all 
seem  slight  and  trivial. 
If  I  should  print  the  names  and  pedigree  of 
that  family  on  Delaware  Avenue,  Buffalo, 
N.  Y.,  who  were  fed  by  this  old  farmer  for 
two  years,  and  who  then  turned  upon  him 
and  abused  him  cruelly,  it  would  not  secure 
his  money.  And  should  I  go  with  St.  Ge- 
rome-Roycroft  and  play  rough-house  with 
their  kitchen,  do  up  the  servants,  black  the 
eyes  of  the  Honest  Lawyer,  and  scare  the 
Lady  of  the  House  into  hysterics,  it  would 
do  no  good,  and  the  Saint  and  I  might  get 
six  months  apiece  for  interesting  ourselves 
in  matters  that  are  none  of  ours. 
Well,  it  does  n't  make  much  difference  ! 
Let  the  great  lawyer  who  owes  Zeke  for 
two  loads  of  hay  laugh  the  old  man  into 
babbling  embarrassment ;  and  let  the  proud 
Lady  of  the  House  who  has  taken  on  un 
due  adipose  at  his  expense  screech  at  him 
that  "he  is  a  nasty  old  thing."  Who 
cares ! 

58 


The  old  man  has  passed  his  three  score  &  A  MESSAGE 

ten — he  is  living  only  by  God's  grace.  His  TO  GARCIA 

children  are  all  grown  up  and  gone — his 

work  is  done.  Let  him  go  home  to  his 

weed-covered  farm  and  tell  his  old  wife 

his  troubles,  and  together  let  them  cry  salt 

tears  down  their  wrinkled  cheeks — it  won't 

help  their  failing  eyesight  any,  I  tell  you 

that.   Who    cares?    The    neighbors    will 

come  in  before  long,  and  then  go  down 

town  and  send  telegrams  to  Chicago,  Des 

Moines  and  Cleveland,  and  in  three  days 

they  will  form  a  procession  and  head  for 

the  cemetery. 


I  'm  not  sure  just  what  the  unpardonable 
sin  is,  but  I  believe  it  is  the  disposition  to 
evade  the  payment  of  small  bills. 
The  folks  who  abused  Old  Zeke  Crosby 
are  not  "bad"  people.  On  the  contrary 
they  move  in  the  best  circles  of  society, 
belong  to  the  Presbyterian  Church,  and 
are  eminently  respectable.  They  lack  im 
agination,  for  if  they  could  understand 
the  misery,  the  worry  and  the  pain  they 
cause,  it  is  not  at  all  probable  they  would 
inflict  it.  They  fire  the  farmer  out — &  for 
get  him.  To  them,  that  is  all  there  is  of  it. 

59 


A  MESSAGE  Now  if  they  are  unjust  to  a  helpless  old 
TO  GARCIA  farmer,  they  are  also  unjust  to  others. 
Doubtless  dressmakers,  grocers,  butchers 
and  other  plain  people  suffer  at  their  hands 
in  the  same  way.  Their  lives  are  so  full 
looking  after  the  mere  machinery  of  life — 
so  filled  with  selfishness,  that  they  ride 
right  over  other  folks,  and  no  matter  how 
many  are  crushed  beneath  the  wheels  of 
their  chariots,  they  know  nothing  of  it.  Yet 
they  go  "slumming,"  belong  to  mission 
ary  societies  and  contribute  to  College 
Settlements  ^ryf^r 

Does  not  "Society"  in  its  society  sense 
breed  just  this  dead,  cruel,  thoughtless 
indifference  ?  It  does  seem  so,  for  even  in 
our  little  town  the  only  dead-beats  are  those 
who  are  in  the  "set."  Ask  the  grocer,  the 
livery-man,  or  the  butcher  who  are  the 
folks  that  contract  bills  and  never  pay,  or 
pay  whenever  they  please,  and  he  will  tell 
you  they  are  the  aristocrats.  The  carpen 
ters,  stone-masons,  blacksmiths  &  farmers 
look  you  squarely  in  the  eye,  speak  to  you 
frankly  face  to  face,  and  if  they  promise  to 
pay  you  Saturday  night,  and  cannot,  they 
come  around  and  tell  you  why.  I  have  been 
despoiled  of  hard-earned  dollars,  and  had 
60 


my  reputation  ripped  up  the  back  when  A  MES 
I  ventured  to  ask  for  my  own,  but  never  TO  GARCIA 
excepting  by  those  who  have  a  Thursday. 
49»  If  you  wish  to  lessen  the  worries  of  the 
world  and  scatter  sunshine  as  you  go,  do  n't 
bother  to  go  a-slumming,  or  lift  the  fallen, 
or  trouble  to  reclaim  the  erring — simply 
pay  your  debts  cheerfully  and  promptly.  It 
lubricates  the  wheels  of  trade,  breaks  up 
party  ice,  gives  tone  to  the  social  system 
and  liberates  good-will. 
Pay  as  you  go. 

Especially  pay  the  people  who  work  by  the 
day  and  toil  with  their  hands.  A  dollar 
means  much  to  the  man  who  spades  your 
garden — never  humiliate  the  man  by  mak 
ing  him  ask  for  his  dollar  gj&  Give  it  to  him 
immediately  the  work  is  done,  and  if  he 
did  well,  tell  him  so.  When  the  woman 
who  crouches  over  a  sewing  machine  for 
you,  all  day  long,  brings  the  garment  home, 
pay  her  all  you  owe,  and  do  not  add  to  her 
troubles  by  exercising  the  prerogative  of 
the  one  who  is  paying  over  money,  to 
flaunt  out  either  insulting  remarks  or  in 
sulting  manners. 

The  Gentle  Man  shows  his  true  nature  in 
his  treatment  of  social  inferiors ;  and  of  all 

61 


A  MESSAGE  damning  sins,  the  withholding  of  money 
TO  GARCIA  due  a  working  man  is  the  worst.  Let  us 
pay  as  we  go.  And  the  cheerfulness  and 
good-will  we  give   out  with  our  money 
will  in  turn  be  given  out  by  those 
we  pay  it  to.   Pay  as  you  go. 


THE  BROTHERHOOD 
OF  JINERS 


8! 


O,  I  do  not  belong  to  a  A  MESSAGE 
Church  nor  to  any  Secret  TO  GARCIA 
Society. 

I  do  not  belong  to  any 
thing,  except  the  East 
Aurora  Hook  and  Lad 
der  Company. 
Why  should  any  one  who 
»  Of  course  I  am  a  mem- 


is  free,  belong  ?  i 
ber  of  the  Society  of  the  Philistines,  but 
as  I  can  resign  at  any  time  if  there  appears 
an  item  in  the  Magazine  I  do  not  like,  it 
cannot  be  said  that  I  really  belong.  To 
belong  implies  that  some  one  has  a  rope 
fastened  to  your  foot.  And  furthermore,  I 
do  not  want  any  one  to  "belong"  to  me. 
I  would  hold  my  friend  only  by  the  virtue 
that  is  in  me  —  by  the  attraction  of  the 
worth  that  is  in  my  soul. 
Still,  I  might  belong  to  a  Secret  Society  if 
there  was  wisdom  to  be  gained  thereby  that 
could  not  be  gotten  in  any  other  way. 
But  mark  you  this,  Dearie,  there  is  no  Se 
cret  Society  that  has  corralled  truth.  Truth 
is  in  the  air,  and  when  your  head  gets  into 
the  right  stratum  you  know  it.  No  one  can 
impart  it  to  you  until  the  time  is  ripe,  and 
when  the  time  is  ripe  for  you  to  know,  you 


A  MESSAGE   do  not  have  to  ride  a  Goat  in  order  to 
TO  GARCIA  understand.  God's  Eternal  Truth  is  not  to 
be  secured  that  way. 

Darwin  says  the  herding  instinct  in  ani 
mals  has  its  base  in  fear. 
Sheep  and  cattle  go  in  droves,  while  a  lion 
simply  flocks  with  his  mate — and  lets  it  go 
at  that.  Frederick  Nietzsche  writes  in  his 
Third  Essay  on  the  "Genealogy  of  Mor 
als,"  "Prompted  by  a  desire  to  cast  off 
depression  and  impotence,  the  sickly  and 
weak  instinctively  strive  for  gregarious 
organization.  Those  who  wish  to  lead  have 
always  fostered  fear,  encouraging  this  ten 
dency  to  herd,  promising  protection  and 
offering  to  impart  valuable  knowledge  in 
return  for  a  luxurious  livelihood." 
The  Jiner  instinct  in  man  is  a  manifestation 
of  weakness,  not  strength.  It  is  a  clutch  to 
get  something  for  nothing,  a  grab  at  good 
which  you  have  not  earned. 
By  going  with  a  gang  you  hope  to  grow 
wise  3$,  But  while  wisdom  has  sometimes 
come  to  men  in  solitude,  it  is  not  to  be 
found  in  the  crowd.  I  am  opposed  on  prin 
ciple  to  secrets.  Is  truth  a  thing  to  hide  in 
a  ginger  jar  on  a  high  shelf?  You  are  wel 
come  to  all  the  good  I  can  impart,  and  if 
68 


you  are  in  possession  of  truth  that  the  A  MESSAGE 
world  needs  and  you  keep  it  back,  you  are  TO  GARCIA 
not  my  kind  ^5* 

But  the  fact  is,  you  can't.  In  years  agone, 
when  every  man's  hand  was  against  his 
neighbor,  it  was  proper  and  right  for  men 
to  unite  with  other  men  in  order  to  stand 
against  a  common  foe.  Clan  fought  clan 
with  tooth  and  nail,  and  to  despoil  and  rob 
and  kill  was  the  right  of  him  who  could — 
and  to  further  this  sort  of  thing,  Secret 
Societies  with  their  shibboleths  and  pass 
words  and  signs  and  grips  came  into  being. 
Secret  Societies  are  a  product  of  savagery, 
and  the  fact  that  they  exist  is  proof  of  our 
origin.  All  men  are  my  brothers,  not  just 
those  who  belong. 

Of  course  I  do  not  claim  that  Secret  Soci 
eties  are  savage  institutions  now.  On  the 
contrary  they  are  quite  toothless,  innocent 
affairs  where  men  meet  for  frolic  and  good 
fellowship.  As  social  institutions  they  are 
all  right ;  but  bless  your  soul !  they  have 
no  "secrets." 

The  answer  to  that  last  remark,  I  know  full 
well  is,  "How  do  you  know,  since  you  do 
not  belong?"  ^8& 

And  so  I  will  say,  well,  I  know  the  men 

69 


A  MESSAGE  who  do.  They  are  pretty  good  fellows,  too. 

TO  GARCIA  One  of  them  who  has  attained  the  48th 
Degree  in  Something  owns  the  farm  next 
to  mine,  and  in  summer  we  often  go  swim 
ming  together  in  the  creek.  When  we  stand 
upon  the  bank,  stripped,  ready  to  dive  off 
into  th'  ole  swimmin'  hole,  I  '11  defy  Herr 
Tuefelsdroch,  or  any  of  his  Disciples,  to 
tell  which  biped  holds  in  his  epidermis  the 
Great  Secret  Doctrine. 
Does  my  neighbor  possess  Spiritual  Truth 
that  I  do  not  ? 

No,  Dearie  «J£  He  is  a  nice  man,  but  he  is 
not  in  possession  of  any  great  South  African 
Spiritual  gems.  If  he  were  it  would  make 
him  round-shouldered  to  carry  them.  And 
the  virtue  of  my  neighbor  lies  in  the  fact 
that  when  we  are  alone  together,  he  con 
fesses  that  all  his  jining  has  given  him  no 
insight  into  the  Mystery  of  Things.  He 
jines  out  of  pure  sociability. 
Then  there  are  various  other  worthy  men 
in  town  who  belong  to  Lodges.  I  know  two 
dozen  of  them  or  more.  I  have  known  some 
of  them  for  twenty  years,  and  have  been 
with  them  under  every  vicissitude  of  life. 
I  buy  oats  and  hay  of  them  ;  and  when  they 
bring  me  potatoes  the  scrubby  ones  are 
70 


often  in  the  bottom  of  the  bag.  I  meet  these  A  MESSAGE 
Jiners  at  the  Grocery,  or  the  Station  when  TO  GARCIA 
we  go  down  to  see  the  four-o'clock  train 
come  in;  I  often  pitch  horse  shoes  with 
them,  and  surely  I  would  be  base  to  insin 
uate  that  anything  was  wrong  in  their 
Secret  Society  doin's. 

All  the  point  I  wish  to  make  is  that  they 
are  not  much  beyond  me  in  esoteric  truth, 
for  I  usually  turn  the  bag  of  tubers  out  on 
the  barn  floor  before  I  make  a  price  on  them. 
One  reason  why  I  criticise  Secret  Societies 
is  that  they,  for  the  most  part,  exclude 
women.  If  a  thing  is  good,  the  man  who 
would  hide  it  away  from  the  woman  he 
loves  is  only  a  2  x  4 ;  and  if  a  thing  is  no 
good  and  he  pretends  to  Her  it  is,  &  keeps 
it  on  a  high  shelf,  he  is  still  a  2  x  4 — and 
both  are  aware  of  it. 

Very  much  has  been  said  by  the  Funny 
Press  about  attending  Lodge  and  the  con 
sequent  marital  infelicity  that  sometimes 
follows ;  but  the  joke  is  founded  on  a  very 
grim  and  lamentable  fact.  Secret  Societies 
tend  to  separate  the  sexes  in  their  mental 
occupations,  and  this  is  the  most  grievous 
count  that  can  be  brought  against  them. 
Men  and  women  should  commune  intel- 


A  MESSAGE  lectually :  to  lovey-dovey  is  not  enough. 

TO  GARCIA  Only  to  lovey-dovey  is  to  hate  afterwards. 
Where  men  &  women  meet  only  to  lovey- 
dovey,  society  is  essentially  barbaric ;  and 
where  the  males  monopolize,  or  think,  or 
pretend  to  think,  that  they  monopolize 
wisdom,  there  is  small  hope  for  progress. 
Man  cannot  advance  and  leave  woman  be 
hind.  And  the  one  point  of  congratulation 
in  this  whole  Secret  Society  business  is  that 
Secret  Societies  have  no  secrets  that  are 
worth  a  tuppenny  dam.  The  wisdom  that  is 
among  them  is  free  to  any  man  or  woman 
who  can  absorb  it  *w 
I  have  met  a  few  men  and  women  in  my 
lifetime  who  were  in  possession  of  valuable 
Spiritual  Truth.  And  I  knew  it,  not  from 
what  they  said,  but  because  there  shone 
from  their  faces  a  light,  and  from  their  per 
sons  there  went  a  radiance,  and  in  all  their 
actions  was  a  dignity  that  gave  their  words 
weight  @  But  these  rare  beings  did  not 
"belong" — they  were  themselves,  and  they 
were  great  because  they  were.  Into  their 
souls  there  had  been  absorbed  a  goodly 
meed  of  the  Divine  Spirit  &  Let 's  keep 
the  windows  open  to  the  East,  be  worthy, 
and  sometime  we  shall  know. 
72 


ABOUT  ADVERTISING 
BOOKS 


NE  of  the  mysteries  of  A  MESSAGE 
this  world  is  why  one   TO  GARCIA 
book  will  reach  a  sale  of  a 
hundred  thousand  copies 
and  another  one  equally 
good  falls  flat.  There  was 
"Ships  that  pass  in  the 
Night "  that  out-sold  any 


book  of  its  day — gone  now,  like  ships  that 
pass  in  the  night.  It  was  n't  a  bad  book,  nor 
so  very  good;  just  such  as  five  hundred 
girls  who  have  had  their  souls  quickened, 
and  wits  sharpened,  and  hearts  bruised  by 
a  little  Experience,  write  every  year.  Books 
like  that  are  written  hot  off  the  bat,  as  my 
friend  Mr.  Dooley  would  say.  And  all  good 
things  are  so  written,  although,  of  course, 
it  would  be  a  mistake  to  assume  that  all 
things  so  written  are  good.  Yet  the  presses 
of  a  dozen  publishers  ran  overtime  and 
could  not  supply  the  demand  for  Beatrice 
Harraden's  book  of^f 
Well,  what  sold  it?  Newspaper  advertising? 
No,  dearie,  newspaper  advertising  does  not 
sell  books ;  newspaper  advertising  sells 
some  things,  but  not  books.  To  simply  an 
nounce  that  you  have  Soulheaver's  poems 
may  be  good  policy,  for  possibly  some  one 

77 


A  MESSAGE  is  looking  for  Soulheaver's  works,  but  no 
TO  GARCIA  amount  of  praise  added  to  your  advertise 
ment  will  cause  a  stranger  to  invest  in 
Soulheaver.  Columns  of  puffery  by  paid 
"reviewers"  do  not  sell  books.  I  've  had 
a  paper  with  a  hundred  thousand  circula 
tion  give  one  of  my  books  a  lavish  write-up 
of  a  full  column,  and  the  stuff  did  not  fetch 
a  single  order. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  few  weeks  ago  I 
received  six  orders  in  one  day  for  a  book 
from  the  comparatively  obscure  town  of 
Humboldt,  Iowa,  and  all  were  traceable  to 
a  certain  young  woman  who  read  from  the 
volume  at  a  teacher's  convention. 
It  seems  this  young  woman  had  the  con 
fidence  and  respect  and  affection  of  her 
auditors  $,  Her  recommendation  carried 
weight.  When  she  said,  "I  hold  in  my 
hand  a  book;  it  is  so  good  that  I  want  you 
to  enjoy  it  with  me,"  immediately  there 
was  a  desire  in  the  hearts  of  several  in  that 
little  audience  to  own  a  copy  of  that  iden 
tical  book;  for  that  which  could  minister  to 
the  wants  of  this  strong,  discriminating, 
yet  gentle  girl,  they  felt  must  be  worth 
while.  These  kind  folk  who  bought  my 
book,  because  a  Discerning  young  woman 
78 


recommended  it,  in  their  turn  sold  a  hun-  A  MESSAGE 
dred  copies.  They  possibly  were  not  aware  TO  GARCIA 
of  it — but  they  did. 

There  is  a  fellow  by  the  name  of  William 
Hawley  Smith,  who  could  play  Cyrano  de 
Bergerac  without  an  artificial  beak,  but 
whose  generous  heart  is  so  big  that  his  nose 
is  an  insignificant  pug  in  proportion.  He, 
too,  could  fight  &  compose  a  ballad  at  the 
same  time,  pinking  you  at  the  T  envoi. 
When  Hawley  Smith  and  Zangwill  met  in 
Chicago,  the  Dreamer  of  the  Ghetto  fell  on 
the  neck  of  Smith,  cried  for  joy,  and 
exclaimed,  "At  last!  Thank  God,  I  've 
found  a  man  as  homely  as  myself!" 
Hawley  Smith  has  analyzed  the  problem 
of  education  as  thoroughly  as  did  Jean 
Jacques  Rousseau  and  practiced  it  a  deal 
better;  and  if  he  had  not  allowed  his  com 
pass  to  go  off  ten  points  in  deference  to  the 
Methodist  Church,  would  have  written  as 
deathlessly.  But  had  he  written  as  well  as 
he  could,  like  Jean  Jacques,  he  might  have 
asked  for  bread  and  been  given  a  pile  of 
stone — after  he  was  dead. 
Hawley,  he  once  read  from  one  of  my 
books  and  simply  told  the  audience  that  in 
his  opinion  the  work  was  not  so  bad  as  it 

79 


A  MESSAGE  might  be,  and  the  next  day  every  book- 

TO  GARCIA  dealer  in  that  town  was  wiring  Putnam's 

Sons  to  "Send  by  first  Express,"  etc.  This 

shows  how  some  folks  regard    Hawley 

Smith's  opinions. 

The  Sons  wrote  to  me  asking  if  I  had  been 
out  blowing  my  Horn.  I  replied,  "No,  and 
even  if  I  had  it  would  have  made  no  spec 
ial  difference  in  sales — it 's  all  the  fault  of 
de  Bergerac  Smith." 

The  Sons  replied  by  wire,  "Engage  Berg 
erac  ten  years  contract  his  own  terms."  ^ 
By  the  way,  Hawley  Smith  wrote  a  book 
that  has  sold  well  over  a  hundred  thousand 
copies,  and  has  done  more  to  evolve  edu 
cation  in  America  into  common-sense  lines 
than  anything  Pestalozzi  ever  printed.  This 
little  book  has  been  a  world-mover — I  will 
not  tell  you  its  title — you  are  to  be  pitied  if 
you  do  not  know  it — and  yet  the  author 
never  got  a  dollar  out  of  it.  When  he  wrote 
it,  publishers  sniffed  at  it,  others  mocked, 
one  took  it  as  a  gift  and  told  the  author  he 
was  welcome  to  look  in  the  show  windows 
whenever  he  passed  by,  and  all  the  icicles 
on  the  cornice  were  his  if  he  cared  to  climb 
up  and  get  them  &&> 

But  let  us  go  back,  ere  we  stray,  and  say, 
80 


Bergerac  could  not  be  hired  to  boom  books;  A  MESSAGE 
and  if  he  could,  his  recommendation  would  TO  GARCIA 
be  worthless  «g£  His  word  is  only  valuable 
because  it  is  not  for  sale.  The  advertisement 
that  secures  recognition  and  really  sells  the 
book  cannot  be  purchased — it  cannot  even 
be  asked  for — but  must  spring  spontaneous 
from  the  sympathetic  heart.  To  request  it 
would  be  to  lose  it,  for  like  love,  it  goes  to 
him  who  does  not  ask  for  it,  and  passes  in 
silence  all  those  who  plot,  scheme  and  lie 
in  wait.  It  goes  only  to  the  worthy:  but 
alas!  the  worthy  sometimes — aye,  often, 
pine  away  of  heart-hunger,  and  there  is  no 
hand  to  caress,  nor  gentle  voice  to  soothe; 
and  youth  flies  fast,  and  recognition  comes 
only  when  it  is  no  more  desired,  and  when 
the  presence  of  cool,  all-enfolding  death — 
strong  deliveress — is  more  grateful  than 
the  applause  of  men. 

3%  Good  horseshoe  nails  are  always  good 
nails,  but  what  is  good  in  literature  is  all  a 
matter  of  taste.  There  is  no  standard.  You 
like  it  because  you  like  it,  and  if  certain 
other  people  praise  a  thing  it  is  a  good  rea 
son  why  you  should  let  it  severely  alone— 
or  buy  it.  It  all  depends  upon  who  this 
person  is  *z& 

81 


A  MESSAGE  When  you  read  a  column  of  unsigned 
TO  GARCIA  puffery  in  the  "Tribune"  about  Jingle's 
latest  novel,  you  are  not  influenced  in  Jin 
gle's  favor  even  in  the  estimation  of  a  hair, 
for  you  do  not  know  the  writer  a£  If  the 
reviewer's  style  is  bad,  or  you  think  it  is, 
you  probably  inwardly  vow  you  will  never 
read  Jingle  under  any  conditions,  because 
Jingle  has  pleased  a  man  of  bad  taste,  and 
this  is  a  fit  excuse  for  eschewing  Jingle  ^ 
In  advertising  a  book  I  would  rather  quote 
the  reviewers  who  damned  it,  than  those 
who  were  lavish  in  their  praise.  Books  well 
damned  often  boom,  but  books  merely 
praised  in  print — bah!  Who  wants  'em? 
When  a  book  is  damned  in  print  the  dam 
nation  is  sincere,  but  fulsome  flattery  is 
usually  the  work  of  some  fellow  who  never 
read  the  volume — and  all  prospective  buy 
ers  know  it.  Unscathing  criticism  of  a  work 
indicates  that  it  is  a  Bible  to  some,  and  thus 
are  averages  held  good. 
My  own  ambition  is  to  write  a  book  that 
will  be  excluded  from  the  mails ;  and  then 
my  fortune  will  be  made.  If  John  Wana- 
maker  again  comes  into  power,  I  think  I 
can  fetch  it  #?&? 

A  book  booms  in  the  market,  usually  be- 
82 


cause  one  friend  recommends  it  to  another.  A  MESSAGE 
No  person  can  read  a  book  secretly  and  by  TO  GARCIA 
stealth,  and  then  gloat  over  it  alone  «§£  A 
woman  may  discover  the  only  pure  baking 
powder  and  chuckle  over  her  rich  find — 
keeping  the  secret  to  herself  so  as  to  make 
other  housewives  envious  of  her  biscuit, 
but  she  can  never  read  a  book  and  like  it 
(or  dislike  it)  and  keep  the  fact  to  herself. 
All  book  lovers  have  chums,  and  the  pleas 
ure  of  reading  is  to  pass  this  joy  along  to 
another.  Lovers  always  read  together,  and 
the  chief  joy  of  loving  a  woman  is  to  read 
to  her,  or  have  her  read  to  you.  To  mix  it 
mentally  with  a  good  woman  who  has 
phosphorous,  is  paradise  enow. 
Books  that  have  boomed  have  usually  been 
those  that  have  been  spurned  by  publishers 
and  gone  a-begging,  and  yet  publishers  are 
often  very  shrewd  men.  The  sale  started, 
nobody  knows  just  how.  The  only  book 
I  have  mentioned  by  name  in  this  article 
was  thought  so  little  of  by  publisher  and 
author  that  it  was  n't  even  copyrighted, 
and  to  name  others  that  have  boomed 
in  spite  of  publishers  would  be  merely  to 
deal  in  the  tritest  kind  of  truism.  Cast 
about  in  your  mind  and  recall  incidents 

83 


A  MESSAGE  to  suit  <&>  No  advertiser  has  ever  had  the 
TO  GARCIA  talent  to  force  a  thoroughly  bad  book  upon 
the  market  and  make  it  sell.  Ten  thousand 
dollars  invested  in  newspaper  advertising 
will  start  an  inquiry  for  any  nostrum  or 
brand  of  goods,  but  a  moribund  book  can 
never  be  galvanized  into  life. 
What  men  call  "luck"  or  " chance "  is  the 
result  of  law  not  understood.  And  the  luck 
that  makes  a  book  "go"  is  regulated  by  a 
law  that  no  advertising  expert  has  yet  been 
able  to  control.  Mystery  enshrouds  it  all. 
The  man  who  by  his  genius  can  blow 
this  mist  away  and  place  his  hand 
upon  the  law  that  controls  the 
popularity  of  a  good  book, 
shall  have  riches  and 
honor  and  undy 
ing  renown. 


CONSECRATED 
LIVES 


ERE 's  a  thought,  Dearie,  A  MESSAGE 
that  I  give  to  you  because  TO  GARCIA 
I  have  n't  a  very  firm 
grasp  upon  it  myself.  In 
order  to  clarify  my  mind 
I  explain  to  you  $f  And 
thus,  probably,  do  I  give 
you  something  which  is 


already  yours.  Grateful  ?  of  course  you  are 
—there !  sTsSf 

The  thought  is  this : — but  before  I  explain 
it  let  me  tell  of  what  a  man  saw  in  a  cer 
tain  cottage  in  Denmark.  And  it  was  such 
a  little  white-washed  cottage,  too,  with  a 
single,  solitary  rose  bush  clambering  over 
the  door!  An  Artist,  his  Wife  and  their 
Little  Girl  lived  there.  There  were  four 
rooms,  only,  in  this  cottage — a  kitchen,  a 
bedroom,  a  workroom  &  the  Other  Room. 
The  kitchen  was  for  cooking,  the  bedroom 
for  sleeping,  the  workroom  for  work,  and 
the  Other  Room  was  where  the  occupants 
of  the  cottage  received  their  few  visitors. 
When  the  visitors  remained  for  tea  or  lunch 
the  table  was  spread  in  the  Other  Room, 
but  usually  the  Artist,  his  Wife  and  their 
Little  Girl  ate  their  meals  in  the  kitchen, 
or  in  summer  on  the  porch  at  the  back  of 

89 


A  MESSAGE  the  house  jfjf  Now  the  Artist  painted  pic- 
TO  GARCIA  tures,  and  his  Wife  carved  beautiful  shapes 
in  wood ;  but  they  did  n't  make  much 
money — in  fact  no  one  seemed  to  know 
them,  at  all.  They  did  n't  have  funds  to 
accumulate  a  library,  and  perhaps  would 
not  if  they  had.  But  still  they  owned  all 
the  books  written  by  Georg  Brandes. 
These  books  were  kept  in  a  curious  little 
case,  which  the  Artist  and  his  Wife,  them 
selves,  had  made. 

if  And  before  the  case  of  books  was  an 
ancient  Roman  lamp,  suspended  from  the 
ceiling  by  a  chain. 

And  the  lamp  was  kept  always  lighted, 
night  and  day. 

Each  morning,  before  they  tasted  food,  the 
man  &  his  Wife  read  from  Georg  Brandes, 
and  then  they  silently  refilled,  trimmed  & 
made  the  lamp  all  clean  and  tidy. 
Oho !  why,  your  eyes  are  filling  with  tears 
— how  absurd — &  you  want  to  hear  more 
about  the  Artist  and  his  Wife  and  the 
Little  Girl ! 

But,  bless  me !  that  is  all  I  know  about 
them  ## 

However,  I  do  know  that  Georg  Brandes 
is  one  of  the  Apostles  of  the  Better  Day. 
90 


His  message  is  a  plea  for  beauty — that  is  A  MESSAGE 
to  say,  harmony  &  He  would  have  us  TO  GARCIA 
live  lives  of  simplicity,  truth,  honesty  and 
gentleness.  He  would  have  us  work  for 
harmony  and  love,  instead  of  for  place  and 
power.  Georg  Brandes  is  an  individualist 
and  a  symbolist.  He  thinks  all  of  our  be 
longings  should  mean  much  to  us,  and  that 
great  care  should  be  exercised  in  selection. 
We  need  only  a  few  things,  but  each  of 
these  things  should  suggest  utility,  strength, 
harmony  and  truth  Jf  All  of  our  actions 
must  be  suggestive  of  peace  and  right.  Not 
only  must  we  speak  truth,  but  we  must 
live  it.  Our  lives  should  be  consecrated  to 
the  good — lives  consecrated  to  Truth  and 
Beauty.  Consecrated  Lives ! 
And  so  this  Artist  and  his  Wife,  I  told  you 
of  were  priests  of  Beauty,  and  their  little 
girl  was  a  neophyte ;  and  the  room  where 
the  Roman  lamp  burned  was  filled  with 
the  holiness  of  beauty,  and  no  unkind 
thought  or  wrong  intent  could  exist  there. 
&  Consecrated  Lives !  that  is  the  subject. 
There  is  a  brotherhood  of  such,  and  you 
can  reach  out  and  touch  finger  tips  with 
the  members  the  round  world  over  $fjf 
Beauty  is  an  Unseen  Reality — an  attempt 


A  MESSAGE  to  reveal  a  spiritual  condition.  Members  of 
TO  GARCIA  this  Brotherhood  of  Consecrated  Lives  do 
not  take  much  interest  in  Salisbury's  Po 
litical  Policy,  and  all  the  blatant  blowing 
of  brass  horns  that  are  used  on  'Change, 
in  pulpits,  or  by  Fourth  of  July  speakers 
are  to  them  trivial  and  childish.  They  dis 
tinguish  at  once  the  note  of  affectation, 
hypocrisy  &  pretense  in  it  all.  They  know 
its  shallowness,  its  selfishness  and  its  ex 
tremely  transient  quality. 
Yet  your  man  of  the  Consecrated  Life  may 
mix  with  the  world,  and  do  the  world's 
business,  but  for  him  it  is  not  the  true 
world,  for  hidden  away  in  his  heart  he 
keeps  burning  a  lamp  before  a  shrine  ded 
icated  to  Love  &  Beauty.  The  Adept  only 
converses  at  his  best  with  Adept,  and  he 
does  this  through  self-protection.  To  hear 
the  world's  coarse  laugh  in  his  Holy  of 
Holies — no  !  and  so  around  him  is  a  sacred 
circle,  and  within  it  only  the  Elect  are 
allowed  to  enter. 

To  join  this  brotherhood  of  Consecrated 
Lives  requires  no  particular  rites  of  initia 
tion —  no  ceremonial  —  no  recommenda 
tions.  You  belong  when  you  are  worthy. 
if  But  do  not  for  a  moment  imagine  you 
92 


have  solved  the  difficulty  when  you  have  A  MESSAGE 
once  entered.  To  pride  yourself  on  your  TO  GARCIA 
entrance  is  to  run  the  danger  of  finding 
yourself  outside  the  pale  with  password 
hopelessly  forgotten.  Within  the  esoteric 
lines  are  circles  and  inner  circles,  and  no 
man  yet  has  entered  the   inmost   circle 
where  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant  is  secreted. 
All  is  relative  $f$f 

But  you  know  you  belong  to  the  Brother 
hood  when  you  feel  the  absolute  nothing 
ness  of  this  world  of  society,  churches, 
fashion,  politics  and  business ;  and  realize 
strongly  the  consciousness  of  the  Unseen 
World  of  Truth,  Love  and  Beauty.  The 
first  emotion  on  coming  into  the  Brother 
hood  is  one  of  loneliness  &  isolation.  You 
pray  for  comradeship,  &  empty  arms  reach 
out  into  the  darkness.  But  gradually  you 
awaken  to  the  thought  that  you  are  one  of 
many  who  hope  and  pray  alike ;  and  that 
slowly  this  oneness  of  thought  and  feeling 
is  making  its  impress  felt. 
Then  occasionally  you  meet  one  of  your 
own.  This  one  may  be  socially  high  or 
low,  rich  or  poor,  young  or  old,  man  or 
woman — but  you  recognize  each  other  on 
sight  and  hold  sweet  converse.  Then  you 

93 


A  MESSAGE  part,  mayhap,  never  to  meet  again,  but  you 
TO  GARCIA  are  each  better,  stronger,  nobler  for  the 
meeting  Jf$f 

Consecrated  Lives !  You  meet  &  you  part, 
but  you  each  feel  a  firmer  impulse  to  keep 
the  light  burning — the  altar  light  to  Truth, 
Simplicity  and  Beauty.  No  other  bond  is 
required  than  that  of  devotion  to  Truth, 
the  passion  of  listening  in  the  Silence,  the 
prayer  for  Wholeness  and  Harmony,  the 
earnest  desire  to  have  your  life  reflect  the 
Good  tftf 

All  man-made  organization  would  be  fatal 
to  the  sweet,  subtle  and  spiritual  qualities 
of  the  Brotherhood  jf  For  organization 
means  officers,  judicial  robes,  livery,  arbi 
trary  differentiation,  and  all  the  vile  and 
foolish  clap-trap  of  place  and  power.  It 
means  the  wish  to  dictate,  select  &  exclude, 
and  this  means  jealousy,  prejudice  and 
bitterness — fifteen  candidates  for  a  vacant 
bishopric  with  heart-aches  to  match !  jf 
No  organization  ever  contained  within  its 
ranks  the  best.  Organization  is  arbitrary 
and  artificial !  it  is  born  of  selfishness ;  and 
at  the  best  is  a  mere  matter  of  expediency. 
&  The  Brotherhood  of  Consecrated  Lives 
admits  all  who  are  worthy,  and  all  who 
94 


are  excluded,  exclude  themselves.  If  your  A  MESSAGE 
Life  is  to  be  a  genuine  consecration,  you  TO  GARCIA 
must  be  free.  Only  the  free  man  is  truthful ; 
only  the  heart  that  is  free  is  pure.  How 
many  compose    this   Brotherhood — who 
shall  say  ?  There  are  no  braggart  statisti 
cians,  no  paid  proselytes  with  their  noisy 
boastings.  Two  constitute  a  congregation 
and  where  they  commune  is  a  temple. 
Many  belong  who  do  not  know  it ;  others 
there  be  who  think  they  belong,  and  are  so 
sure  of  it  that  they  do  not. 
But  the  Brotherhood  is  extending  its  lines; 
and  what  think  you  the  earth  will  be  like 
when  the  majority  of  men  and  women 
in  it  learn  that  to  be  simple  and 
honest  and  true,  is  the  part  of 
wisdom,  &  that  to  work 
for  Love  &  Beauty  is 
the  highest  good? 


95 


THE  BEECHAM 
HABIT 


OMETIME    ago    it  be-  A  MESSAGE 
came  necessary  for  me  to  TO  GARCIA 
enter  a  protest  in  these 
pages  on  the  subject  of 
Art  and  Underwear.  The 
Ypsilanti  Yagerites,  with 
unblushing  foreheads, 
encouraged  by  the  High 


Class  Monthlies,  carried  matters  so  far 
that  as  a  man  of  family,  with  growing 
sons  and  daughters,  I  could  not  longer 
admit  the  Family  Press  to  my  home.  For- 

0  tunately  I  succeeded  in  checking  the 
exhibition  without  calling  in  the  aid  of 
Antonius  Comstock. 

The  eczema  has,  however,  broken  out  in 
a  new  place.  In  the  last  number  of  Mc- 
Clure's,  Lim.,  I  see  portrayed,  with  all  the 
seductive  skill  of  the  expert  illustrator,  a 
beautiful  young  woman  with  hair  neatly 
braided  down  her  back.  She  is  arrayed  in 

0  a  night  gown  that  is  a  dream.  Like  the 
Goddess  of  Liberty  in  New  York  harbor, 
she  holds  aloft  a  lighted  candle  in  one 

0  hand  and  in  the  other — a  pill. 

"  If  the  scale  of  the  drawing  is  correct  this 
pill  [is  about  the  size  of  a  baseball.  The 
import  of  the  picture  is  that  the  lissome 

101 


A  MESSAGE  beauty  is  about  to  swallow  the  baseball. 

TO  GARCIA  Beneath  the  picture  is  the  legend :  "  My 
complexion  is  perfect  because  I  take  one 
of  Ellison's  Bully  Bilious  Boluses  every 
night  on  retiring." 

Now,  not  only  do  I  solemnly  protest 
against  this  realistic  tendency  in  art  on  the 
part  of  Billson,  but  I  call  attention  to  some 
truths  brought  to  my  notice  by  the  ship's 
doctor  on  the  "  Lucania."  This  doctor, 
who  seems  to  Understand  Himself,  de 
clares  the  Beecham  Habit  is  very  much  on 
the  increase.  He  says  that  the  people  who 
insist  on  irritating  their  Erie  Canal  by 
doses  of  the  invention  of  Colonel  Carter, 
of  Cartersville,  as  soon  as  they  come  on 
board  are  sure  to  pay  speedy  tribute  to 
Neptune  in  a  surprising  and  unexpected 
way,  &  that  those  addicted  to  the  Beecham 
Habit  are  the  ones  that  suffer  most  when 
traveling  on  the  sad  sea  waves. 
The  Family  Papers  teem  with  warnings 
that  we  must  invest  good  money  in  Fig 
Syrup,  Early  Risers,  Little  Liver  Pills  and 
Base  Ball  Boluses  in  order  to  have  good 
complexions  and  sweet  thoughts.  Very 
many  people  believe  this.  The  habit  be 
gins  by  gentle  dallyings  with  the  Lady 
102 


Webster  Dinner  Pill.  It  grows  and  grows.  A  MESSAGE 
One  pill  is  enough  at  first,  but  two  are  TO  GARCIA 
soon  required  where  only  one  grew  before, 
then  three  are  demanded,  and  soon  a 
change  is  required  from  Pills  to  Fig  Syrup, 
then  Mother  Shipley's  Tea  and  back  to 
Pills  —  from  Carter's  to  Pierce's,  then 
Ayer's,  Beecham's,  Billson's,  and  at  last  a 
frantic  dash  is  made  for  Ripum's  Tablets. 
j£  The  man's  hold  has  been  stored  with 
such  a  miscellaneous  cargo  that  Nature 
stops  perplexed ;  Carter  is  consulted,  and 
she  starts,  she  moves,  she  seems  to  feel 
the  thrill  of  life  along  her  keel.  Then  come 
cold  chills,  hot  bearings,  a  hawser  has 
surely  befouled  the  screw.  Stomach  pro 
tests — mal  de  mer  comes  ashore — liver 
lags,  kidneys  kick, lee  scuppers  are  clogged, 
bilge  accumulates  and  Nature  pipes  all 
hands  to  pump  ship. 

The  patient  goes  into  dry  dock  and  spec 
ialists  being  consulted  tell  him  he  has  can 
cer  of  the  stomach,  fistula,  appendicitis, 
tape  worm,  tuberculosis  of  the  bowels  and 
Bright' s  disease,  and  he  has,  or  thinks  he 
has — which  is  just  as  bad. 
And  all  this  as  a  result  of  the  Beecham 
Habit.  It  is  very  plain  to  every  unpreju- 

103 


A  MESSAGE  diced  reader  that  the  prime  motive  of  the 
TO  GARCIA  fin  de  siecle  Religious  Press  is  to  prove 
that  man  has  liver  trouble  and  salvation 
can  only  be  found  by  patronizing  Dr. 
Pierce' s  Pungent,  Pugnacious,  Polly wog 
Perquisites  ££ft 

Whether  these  things  be  dictated  by  Bish 
op,  Presbytery,  or  Ecumenical  Council,  I 
cannot  say.  But  Colonel  George  Batten, 
Expert  in  Advertising,  advises  me  that  the 
proper  cathartic  is  usually  dictated  by  the 
Committee  of  Seventy.  However  this  is,  I 
find  that  the  "Outlook  "  gives  prominence 
and  publicity  to  Tarrant's  Seltzer,  the 
"  Churchman  "  to  Fig  Syrup,  the  "  Chris 
tian  Register"  to  Acid  Phosphate,  while 
strong  leanings  are  shown  by  the  "  Chris 
tian  Leader  "  for  the  wares  of  Dr.  Pierce. 
"  The  Christian  at  Work"  works  Pierce 
and  Ayer,  the  "  Presbyterian  "  likes  Prune 
Juice,  while  the  "Christian  Advocate" 
lustily  advocates  Early  Risers  and  Ri- 
pum's  Tablets.  The  "  Baptist  Standard  " 
goes  off  on  a  new  track  and  favors  Dr. 
Hall's  Water  Cure  Self-Treatment,  while 
the  "  Examiner"  falls  back  to  Fig  Syrup 
and  Prunes.  The  "  Christian  Herald,' 
edited  by  Rev.  Dr.  Talmage,  seems  to 
104 


conduct  itself  rather  loosely,  for  it  co-  A  MESSAGE 
quettes  its  favors  between  Hood,  Beecham  TO  GARCIA 
and  Dr.  Hall.  As  one  goes  south  of  the 
Ohio  River,  matters  grow  worse,  for  the 
"Southern  Pulpit"  of  Louisville  not  only 
favors  Pierce,  Carter  and  Beecham,  but 
introduces  "  a  sure  cure  for  flatulence,"  in 
the  presence  of  one  Doctor  Jingle,  whose 
wares  are  vouched  for  by  seven  clergymen, 
three  of  them  D.  D.'s. 
The  opinion  is  well  grounded  among  our 
agrarian  population  that  the  chief  claim 
of  our  late  martyred  President  upon  the 
gratitude  of  a  loving  public  lies  in  the  fact 
that  he  invented  Garfield  Tea. 
Not  long  since  in  a  court  of  law  Fig  Syrup 
was  acknowledged  to  be  innocent  of  Figs. 
And  gentlemen  having  purchased  Prune 
Extract  and  congratulating  themselves 
that  they  are  full  of  prunes  have  only  taken 
a  drastic  dose  of  aloes. 
It  seems  the  part  of  wisdom  for  those  on 
sea  (and  land)  to  monkey  with  their  in'ards 
as  little  as  possible.  One's  motto  in  this 
respect  should  be,  "  Place  not  your  trust  in 
prophylactics."  It  is  difficult  to  improve  on 
the  plans  of  God.  Many  men  have  tried  it, 
but  to  their  sorrows^  He  has  made  all 

105 


A  MESSAGE  out-of-doors  full  of  fresh  air.  He  gives  us 
TO  GARCIA  pleasure  in  moderate  exercise,  the  night 
for  sleep,  and  fruit  drops  from  the  trees  at 
our  feet.  All  these  He  made  and  I  hardly 
think  He  ever  intended  that  we  should 
put  an  enemy  into  our  mouths  to  steal 
away  our  digestion— still,  I  may  be  wrong. 


106 


THE  BISHOP'S 
VOICE 


LERGYMEN'S 


Sore  A  MESSAGE 

Throat  or  Tonsilitis  is  TO  GARCIA 
caused  by  speaking  in  an 
unnatural  tone  of  voice. 
God  gave  each  of  us  a 
certain  voice,  and  to  ex 
ercise  it  wisely  and  cul 
tivate  it  is  good. 


The  voice  should  be  the  sounding-board 
of  the  soul. 

But  you  must  cultivate  your  own  voice 
and  not  merely  ;mitate  some  other  voice 
that  you  admire.  Men  who  speak  in  an 
unnatural  tone  express  things  they  do  not 
believe  $f$f 

Not  one  clergyman  in  ten  uses  his  own 
voice — he  uses  only  an  imitation.  He  never 
hears  his  own  voice  and  so  becomes  af 
flicted  with  the  microbe  of  delusion  and 
imagines  some  one  else's  voice  is  better. 
Pouf! 

So  common  is  this  affection  that  the 
Bishop's  Voice  is  heard  on  every  hand,  if 
you  go  to  church  or  conventions.  Very 
many  preachers — especially  young  preach 
ers — expect  to  become  bishops,  and  in 
order  to  be  fully  prepared  when  the  call 
comes,  they  cultivate  a  Bishop's  Voice. 

in 


A  MESSAGE  All  bishops  are  supposed  to  be  powerful 
TO  GARCIA  and  lusty,  also  full  of  besum.  Therefore  it 
is  imagined  that  they  have  voices  like 
bulls  of  Bashan.  When  they  pray  they 
shake  the  rafters  of  Heaven. 
Beware  of  the  Bishop's  Voice — your  own 
is  better  Jfjf 

Actors  who  cultivate  the  Brutus,  Virgin- 
ius  and  Sardanapalus  voice  and  preachers 
who  use  the  Bishop's  Voice  are  fit  candi 
dates  for  vegetables.  Worse  than  that — 
they  are  candidates  for  tonsilitis,  simply 
because  they  are  abusing  the  physical 
organs  of  speech. 

Worse  than  that — they  are  candidates  for 
Nervous  Prostration,  because  they  have 
ceased  to  be  themselves  and  are  trying  to 
pass  for  someone  else. 
Worse  than  that — they  are  losing  their 
own  souls,  because  they  are  not  allowing 
a  true  exercise  and  expression  of  their 
Inner  Spirit. 

Americanitis,  Nervous  Exhaustion  and 
Mental  Prostration  —  one  and  the  same 
thing — is  the  result  of  trying  to  pass  for 
something  different  from  what  you  are. 
Men  who  try  to  conceal  their  own  voice 
and  praise  God  with  the  Bishop's  Bazoo 
112 


are  in  danger  $f  Concealment  is  friction.  A  MESSAGE 
A  secret  gnaws.  TO  GARCIA 

To  religiously  observe  the  Twelfth  Com 
mandment,  "Thou  shalt  not  be  found 
out,"  leads  to  loss  of  manhood,  cold  feet, 
that  tired  feeling,  premature  decay  and  the 
surgeon's  knife. 

To  love  is  very  beautiful — but  to  feel  you 
must  conceal  and  hide  and  refute  and  deny 
your  Saviour  before  men  is  terrible.  If  you 
use  language  to  conceal  your  thought 
you  better  begin  taking  hypophosphites, 
for  you  are  breaking  down  tissue  faster 
than  Nature  can  build  it  up.  God  only  cal 
culates  on  each  man  being  himself,  and 
the  presumption  originally  was  that  he 
would  be  honest.  You  see  it  is  like  this — 
the  Universe  is  not  planned  for  duplicity. 
jf  To  carry  a  live  fox  around  under  your 
bellyband  will  interfere  sooner  or  later 
with  your  digestive  apparatus. 
The  Roberts  plan  is  a  thousand  times 
better  than  the  Breckinridge — ask  Breck- 
inridge  !  Long,  long  years  ago  God  blessed 
the  Roberts  copyright,  although  I  am  told 
He  has  since  changed  His  mind,  but  He 
placed  his  curse  upon  the  Mr.  Hyde  and 
Dr.  Jekyll  business  right  from  the  start, 


A  MESSAGE  and  the  embargo  has  never  been  removed. 

TO  GARCIA  The  Double-Life  does  not  go.  Don't  be  a 
fool,  Lambert  of  Indiana — the  sin  is  in 
affectation,  concealment,  subterfuge,  cry 
ing,  sneaking,  cringing,  denying.  Don't 
you  know  that  ? 

Be  yourself.  Have  nothing  to  conceal. 
To  hell  with  the  Bishop's  Voice. 
Carry  the  fox  no  longer — he  wants  liberty 
as  much  as  you. 


You  shall  know  the  worst  about  me.  It  is 
not  all  sweet  and  savory,  but  if  you  want 
to  know  I  '11  tell  you.  I  used  to  have  head 
ache,  bad  breath,  sore  throat,  watery  eyes, 
night  sweats  and  buzzing  sounds  in  the 
ears ;  but  since  I  took  the  pledge  that  I 
would  just  simply  be  myself,  live  my  own 
life,  one  day  at  a  time,  I  have  gained 
twenty  pounds  in  weight ;  sleep  eight 
hours  without  waking;  eat  anything  in 
sight ;  and  have  the  limit  to  my  credit  in 
four  Savings  Banks. 

P.  S.  I  cheerfully  recommend  God's  Rem 
edies,  and  will  send  my  picture,  before 
and  after  using,  to  all  the  afflicted  who 
may  apply  jf 


114 


THE  KINDERGARTEN 
OF  GOD 


EAR  Playmate  in  the  A  MESSAGE 
Kindergarten    of    God  :  TO  GARCIA 
Please  do  not  take  life 
quite  so   seriously — you 
surely  will  never  get  out 
of  it  alive.   And  as   for 
your  buying  and  selling, 
your  churches  &  banks, 


your  newspapers  and  books,  they  are  really 
at  the  last  of  no  more  importance  than  the 
child's  paper  houses,  red  and  blue  wafers 
and  funny  scissors  things.  Why  you 
grown-ups  !  all  your  possessions  are  only 
just  to  keep  you  out  of  mischief,  until 
Death,  the  good  old  nurse,  comes  &  rocks 
you  to  sleep.  Am  I  not  right  ? 
The  child's  paper  doll  lasts  a  day  and  a 
copy  of  a  daily  paper  lasts  only  half  a 
day  or  until  the  next  edition  appears  ;  and 
as  for  a  church  edifice  it  only  endures  for 
two  days,  if  made  of  wood,  and  three  if  of 
stone.  In  Egypt  I  saw  men  unearthing 
stone  temples,  and  no  one  really  knows 
what  god  these  temples  were  dedicated  to, 
much  less  why.  The  god  they  sought  to 
serve  is  as  dead  as  the  folks  who  invented 


Take  my  word  for  it,  Dear  Playmate,  this 

119 


A  MESSAGE  life  is  only  a  big  joke.  But  we  are  here, 
TO  GARCIA  and  so  let 's  have  all  the  fun  we  can.  And 
in  order  to  get  along  best  we  should  cut 
our  scissors  things  as  well  as  we  can,  and 
model  only  pretty  toys  out  of  the  mud  that 
is  given  us.  It 's  all  Kindergarten  business 
though  :  the  object  is  to  teach  us.  I  really 
believe  we  are  learning  things,  and  if  we 
are  ever  called  to  a  Higher  Grade  we 
shall  be  prepared  to  manage  more  diffi 
cult  lessons  than  when  we  began  here. 
We  are  all  children  in  the  Kindergarten  of 
God.  Take  my  word  for  it,  Playmate,  and 
I  know  as  much  about  God  and  his  plans 
as  any  man  who  ever  trod  this  green 
earth.  I  know  as  much  as  you,  and  you 
know  as  much  as  I,  and  we  are  both  Sons 
of  God  and  it  doth  not  yet  appear  what 
we  shall  be  & 

Systems  of  Guesswork,  facetiously  called 
"Theology,"  do  not  introduce  us  to  God. 
Theologians  are  absurd  men  with  high- 
cut  vests  and  bishop's  voices.  Learned 
men — professors  of  Christology,  praters 
on  Homiletics,  writers  of  Syllogistic  essays 
and  such,  have  confounded  and  confused 
men  and  covered  truth  with  their  brush- 
piles  of  words.  These  men  with  many 
120 


sharked  up  reasons  are  bad  angels,  and  A  MESSAGE 
the  wind  of   their  wings  withers    as    it  TO  GARCIA 
passes.  Their  efforts  have  all  tended  to  be 
fog  and  blind,  while  the  Seers  and  Proph 
ets  and  Poets  and  Doers  have  endeavored 
to  simplify  $f 

"  Do  unto  others  as  you  would  be  done 
by" — you  understand  that,  do  you  not? 
But  what  does  a  man  mean  when  he  talks 
of  Predestination,  Vicarious  Atonement, 
Redemption  by  Faith  and  Hell  and 
Damnation  ? 

Please  take  my  word  for  it  when  I  say 
these  schemes  of  salvation  are  as  idle 
vapors ;  for  I  am  a  Son  of  God,  and  most 
of  the  preachers  who  preach  their  little 
"  schemes "  are  children  of  the  Devil, 
born  in  sin,  and  admit  it. 
I  am  a  thought  of  God ;  I  was  loved  into 
being,  therefore  my  life  in  the  beginning 
was  holy.  Of  course  I  am  slightly  be 
smirched  by  contact  with  fools,  but  in  the 
main  my  life  and  deeds  are  right,  for  be 
ing  a  Child  of  God  I  could  not  stray  very 
far  afield,  even  if  I  wished ;  God,  who  is 
my  mother,  would  call  me  back,  for  has 
He  not  protected  me,  sustained  me  and 
cared  for  me  all  these  years?  Take  my 

121 


A  MESSAGE  word  for  it,  we  are  in  the  Kindergarten  of 
TO  GARCIA  God,  and  all  there  is  of  life  is  to  do  our 
work  (which  is  only  play)  as  well  as  we 
can  and  be  kind.  That  's  all  there  is  of 
wisdom — do  your  work  as  well  as  you  can 
and  be  kind  jf 

I  know  as  much  about  it  as  any  man  who 

ever  lived,  for  I  am  a  Child  of  God,  and 

the  best  man  who  ever  lived  was  nothing 

more.  Do  your  work  as  well  as  you  can 

and  be  kind — that 's  the  best  way  to  get 

along  here,  and  it  is  the  best  preparation 

for  a  Life  to  Come,  if  there  is  one.  This  is 

no  new  Truth,  for  there  is  no  such  thing 

as  a  new  Truth.  Truth  is  as  old  as  Fate. 

There  is  no  plural  Truth — there  is  only  the 

one  Truth,  and  this  is  very  old  and  very 

simple.  All  wise  men  have  known  it.  No 

one  knows  any  more  about  Absolute 

Truth  than  I  do,  and  I  know  as 

much  about  it  as  anyone  who 

ever  lived,   and   I   know 

nothing   if   Do  your 

work  as  well  as  you 

can  and  be  kind. 


122 


ADVANTAGES  AND 
DISADVANTAGES 


HE  so-called  "  disad-  A  MESSAGE 
vantages"  in  the  life  of  TO  GARCIA 
a  child  are  often  its  ad 
vantages.    And    on    the 
other  hand    "advan 
tages"    are    very    often 
disadvantages  of  a  most 
serious  sort.  To  be  born 


in  the  country,  of  poor  parents,  is  no  dis 
advantage.  The  strong  men  in  every 
American  city — the  men  who  can  do 
things ;  the  men  like  James  J.  Hill,  Charles 
E.  Perkins,  Philip  G.  Armour,  Norton 
Finney,  S.  S.  Merrill,  or  the  late  Tom  Pot 
ter,  who  gloried  in  difficulties,  waxed 
strong  in  overcoming  obstacles  &  laughed 
at  disaster — men  who  could  build  three 
miles  of  railroad  a  day,  and  cause  pros 
perous  cities  to  spring  up  where  before 
were  only  swamps  and  jungle,  barren 
plains  or  endless  forest — these  men  were 
all  country  boys,  nurtured  in  adversity  $f 
And  it  is  but  the  tritest  truism  to  say  that 
the  early  life  of  industry  and  unceasing 
economy  of  time  and  things,  was  the  best 
possible  preparation  and  education  that 
these  men  could  have  had  for  doing  a 
great  work  &* 

127 


A  MESSAGE  I  once  heard  George  M.  Pullman  tell  how 
TO  GARCIA  at  ten  years  of  age  he  used  to  cut  wood 
so  his  mother  could  cook,  help  her  wash 
the  dishes  and  sweep ;  carry  water  for  her 
to  do  the  washing,  and  assist  her  hanging 
out  the  clothes.  In  a  year  or  two  more  he 
planted  the  garden,  knew  all  kinds  of  veg 
etable  seeds  on  sight,  knew  every  forest 
tree  that  grew  in  Western  New  York  and 
could  distinguish  between  the  qualities  of 
the  wood.  At  seventeen  he  helped  his 
father  move  houses  and  barns  and  dig 
wells  and  construct  church  steeples.  That 
is  to  say  he  was  getting  an  education — 
learning  to  do  things  in  the  best  way.  He 
was  developing  physique  and  also  build 
ing  character  and  making  soul-fibre.  He 
was  learning  to  make  plans  and  execute 
them,  think  for  himself  and  be  strong  and 
self-reliant.  Yet  he  did  n't  know  it  at  the 
time,  and  later  regretted  his  lack  of  edu 
cation  and  absence  of  opportunity. 
Pullman  was  always  a  little  too  busy  to 
be  a  philosopher ;  in  spite  of  his  mighty 
grasp  on  practical  things  he  failed  to  per 
ceive  that  he  was  a  product  of  the  "  unkind 
conditions"  of  his  boyhood.  He  plumed 
himself  on  overcoming  great  difficulties. 
128 


In  after  dinner  conferences  he  occasionally  A  MESSAGE 
recited  the  great  things  he  had  done  and  TO  GARCIA 
compared  them  to  the  still  greater  things 
he  might  have  done  "if  he  had  only  had 
a  chance." 

Perhaps  George  M.  Pullman  knew  down 
deep  in  his  heart  that  he  had  received  the 
very  best  training  possible  for  his  life 
work;  but  that  quality  in  "self-made" 
men  which  causes  them  to  want  all  the 
credit  for  the  job,  blinded  him  in  a  great 
degree  to  the  truth.  Hence  we  find  him 
protecting  his  own  sons  from  the  blessings 
that  had  been  his.  Instead  of  having  his 
boys  brought  up  to  do  things,  he  had  ser 
vants  who  cheated  them  out  of  all  that 
round  of  daily  duties  which  had  made 
him  strong.  He  had  tutors  who  taught 
them  things  out  of  books  and  gave  them 
advice.  The  result  was  that  the  sons  of 
George  M.  Pullman  have  achieved  guard 
ians  and  their  fantastic  tricks  before  high 
heaven  have  added  to  the  gayety  of  » 
nations  jf 

Pullman's  boys  are  without  even  a  trace 
of  that  decision  and  strength  that  made 
their  father  famous.  George  M.  Pullman 
could  operate  a  great  industry,  but  he 

129 


A  MESSAGE   could  not  bring  up  a  family.  He  succeeded 
TO  GARCIA   in  everything  but  the  boy  business. 

Of  course,  we  cannot  assume  that  these 
boys  would  have  been  as  competent  as 
their  father  had  they  been  brought  up  to 
work,  but  work  would  have,  at  least,  pro 
tected  them  from  excess. 
The  method  pursued  by  George  M.  Pull 
man  in  educating  his  boys  is  the  plan  pur 
sued  by  most  rich  men.  All  that  they  gain 
for  the  world  is  lost  again  in  their 
children  jf 

And  until  yesterday  all  the  college  presi 
dents  and  all  the  pedagogs  who  lectured 
and  taught  and  wrote  and  preached,  fully 
endorsed  the  plan  adopted  by  George  M. 
Pullman  in  educating  his  boys. 
So  sternly  true  is  this  that  Dr.  Edward 
Everett  Hale,  a  graduate  of  Harvard,  has 
said,  "  If  you  should  take  twelve  prize 
men  from  Harvard  and  put  them  on  a 
sinking  ship,  they  would  all  drown  through 
inability  to  construct  a  raft." 
The  mole-blind  pedagogs  are  quite  willing 
to  keep  on  stuffing  boys  with  impressions, 
not  knowing  that  the  number  of  impres 
sions  a  boy  can  hold  is  limited.  We  grow 
through  expression,  and  the  large  colleges, 
130 


even  yet,  afford  a  very  imperfect  means  A  MESSAGE 
for  expression — all  is  impression  and  re-  TO  GARCIA 
pression  and  suppression. 
But  to-day  we  find  a  few  of  the  highest 
type  of  teachers  making  a  bold  stand  for 
the  natural  method  of  education.  That  is, 
they  recognize  that  the  education  which 
George  M.  Pullman  received  was  a  bet 
ter,  wiser  and  safer  education  than  the 
education  which  George  M.  Pullman  gave 
to  his  boys  if 

Recently  I  visited  the  John  Dewey  School 
at  Chicago,  and  there  I  saw  them  doing 
for  the  children,  with  carefully  prepared 
intent,  just  what  fate,  poverty  &  "  unkind 
conditions''  did  for  George  M.  Pullman. 
$f  John  Dewey,  the  head  of  the  Dewey 
School,  is  a  pupil  of  that  noted  psycholo 
gist  and  thoroughly  sane  man,  Dr.  Stanley 
Hall ;  and  the  cry  of  Dr.  Hall  is  "  Back  to 
Nature/' 

At  the  Dewey  School  they  try  to  teach 
children  just  as  a  kind,  intelligent  and 
loving  mother  would  teach  her  children 
if  she  lived  away  off  forty  miles  from 
nowhere,  and  had  an  income  of  three 
hundred  dollars  a  year  to  support  a  fam 
ily  of  nine  if 

131 


A  MESSAGE  Nothing   interests  us  save  as    it  comes 

TO  GARCIA  home  to  us  as  a  personal  issue.  And  in 

visiting  the  Dewey  School  I  unconsciously 

compared  it  with  my  own  early  lack  of 

instruction  jf 

When  I  was  fifteen  years  of  age  I  could 
break  wild  horses  to  saddle  or  harness, 
and  teach  kicking  cows  to  stand  while 
they  were  being  milked.  I  could  fell  trees 
and  drop  the  tree  in  any  direction  desired; 
I  knew  the  relative  value  of  all  native 
woods ;  appreciated  the  difference  in  soil, 
grains,  fruits  and  simple  minerals.  I  could 
use  the  drawshave,  adz,  axe,  broad-axe, 
crosscut  saw,  sickle  and  cradle.  I  could 
make  a  figure-four  trap,  an  axe  helve,  a 
neckyoke,  ox  yoke,  whiffletrees,  clevis, 
and  braid  an  eight-strand  cattle  whip.  We 
used  to  mend  our  harness  on  rainy  days, 
and  I  could  make  a  wax  end  and  thread 
it  with  a  bristle  and  use  a  brad  awl.  I 
knew  how  to  construct  an  ash  leach  and 
to  make  soft  soap,  apple  butter  and  pump 
kin  pies.  I  knew  the  process  of  weaving 
flax  and  wool,  of  making  and  burning 
brick.  I  knew  on  sight  and  had  names  for 
a  score  or  more  of  birds,  and  had  a  good 
idea  of  the  habits  of  squirrels,  skunks, 
132 


wolves  and  the  fishes  that  swam  in  the  A  MESSAGE 
creeks.  I  knew  how  to  cure  hams,  shoul-  TO  GARCIA 
ders  &  sidemeat ;  to  pickle  beef,  and  cover 
apples  with  straw  and  earth  so  they  would 
keep  in   safety  through  the  most  severe 
winter,  and  open  up  in  the  spring  fresh 
and  valuable  jf 

Of  course,  my  knowledge  was  not  of  the 
scientific  order,  and  I  could  not  have  ex 
plained  it  to  another,  because  I  never  knew 
I  had  it.  It  all  came  along  easily,  natur 
ally  and  as  a  matter  of  course.  It  would 
be  absurd  to  say  that  I  was  an  expert 
worker  in  all  the  lines  I  have  mentioned, 
but  I  was  familiar  with  the  processes  and 
could  do  things  with  my  hands  all  in  my 
own  crude  way,  just  as  I  daily  saw  my 
father  and  the  neighbors  doing. 
And  so  when  I  saw  at  this  experimental 
school  of  Chicago  University  the  same 
curriculum  that  I  had  known  in  youth 
being  worked  out  I  could  not  but  smile. 
Professor  John  Dewey,  with  his  costly 
apparatus  and  heavy  endowment,  is  mere 
ly  trying  to  overcome  the  "  advantages  " 
of  civilization  jf 

They  have  no  wild  horses  nor  kicking 
cows  in  the  Dewey  School,  but  they  teach 

133 


A  MESSAGE  children  to  make  things  out  of  wood,  iron 
TO  GARCIA  and  cloth.  They  are  taught  to  measure, 
weigh,  compare  and  decide.  They  wash 
dishes  and  put  things  away  in  a  neat  and 
orderly  manner.  They  are  taught  the  na 
ture  of  wool,  cotton  and  flax,  and  are 
shown  how  to  weave,  dye  and  construct. 
They  learn  without  knowing  when  or  how 
they  learn.  The  repression  and  discipline 
that  one  feels  in  many  schools  is  removed 
and  there  is  an  air  of  freedom  in  the  place 
that  is  very  helpful.  It 's  a  curious  experi 
ment — this  back  to  nature — but  in  the  line 
of  truth  5^ 

There  is  no  more  preposterous  admoni 
tion  than  that  which  has  been  dinged  into 
the  ears  of  innocence  for  centuries,  that 
"  Children  should  be  seen  and  not  heard." 
jijf  The  healthy,  active  child  is  full  of  im 
pressions  and  that  he  should  express  him 
self  is  just  as  natural  as  for  a  bird  to  sing. 
It  is  nature's  way  of  giving  growth — no 
one  knows  a  thing  for  sure  until  he  tells  it 
to  someone  else.  We  deepen  impressions 
by  recounting  them,  and  habitually  to  sup 
press  and  repress  the  child  when  he  wants 
to  tell  of  the  curious  things  he  has  seen,  is 
to  fly  in  the  face  of  God. 
134 


Last  summer  on  a  horseback  ride  of  a  A  MESSAGE 
hundred  miles  or  so  I  came  to  an  out-of-  TO  GARCIA 
the-way  "  Deestrick  School,"  just  such  a 
one  as  you  see  every  three  miles  all  over 
New  York  State.  This  particular  school 
house  would  not  have  attracted  my  atten 
tion  specially  had  I  not  noticed  that  nearly 
half  the  school  lot  was  taken  up  with  a 
garden  and  flower  beds.  No  house  was 
near,  and  it  was  apparent  that  this  garden 
was  the  work  of  the  teacher  and  pupils. 
jf  Straightway  I  dismounted,  tied  my 
horse  and  walked  into  the  school  house  jf 
The  teacher  was  a  man  of  middle  age — a 
hunchback  and  one  of  the  rarest,  gentlest 
spirits  I  ever  met.  Have  you  ever  noticed 
what  an  alert,  receptive  and  beautiful  soul 
is  often  housed  in  a  misshapen  body  ?  This 
man  was  modest  and  shy  as  a  woman,  & 
when  I  spoke  of  the  flower  beds  he  half 
apologized  for  them  and  tried  to  change 
the  subject.  When  after  a  few  moments  he 
realized  that  my  interest  in  his  garden  was 
something  deeper  than  mere  curiosity,  he 
offered  to  go  out  and  show  me  what  had 
been  done.  So  we  walked  out,  and  out, 
too,  behind  us  trooped  the  school  of  just 
fifteen  children  jf 

135 


A  MESSAGE  "  In  winter  we  have  sixty  or  more  pupils, 
TO  GARCIA  but  you  see  the  school  is  small  now.  I 
thought  I  would  try  the  plan  of  teaching 
out  of  doors  half  the  time,  and  to  keep 
the  girls  and  boys  busy  I  just  let  each 
scholar  have  a  flower  bed.  Some  wanted 
to  raise  vegetables  and  of  course  I  let 
them  plant  any  seed  they  wished.  The 
older  children,  girls  or  boys,  help  the 
younger  ones — it  is  lots  of  fun.  When  the 
weather  is  fine  we  are  out  here  a  good 
deal  of  the  time,  just  working  and  talk 
ing/'  explained  the  teacher. 
And  that  is  the  way  this  man  taught — let 
ting  the  children  do  things  and  talk.  He 
explained  to  me  that  he  was  not  an  "  edu 
cated  "  man,  and  as  I  contradicted  him 
my  eyes  filled  with  tears.  Not  educated  ? 
I  wonder  how  many  of  us  who  call  our 
selves  educated  have  a  disciplined  mind, 
and  can  call  by  name  the  forest  birds  in 
our  own  vicinity  ?  Do  we  know  the  bird 
notes  when  we  hear  them  ?  Can  we  with 
pencil  outline  the  leaves  of  oak,  elm,  wal 
nut,  maple,  chestnut,  hazel,  birch  or  beech 
trees,  so  that  others,  familiar  with  these 
trees,  can  recognize  them  ? 
Do  we  know  by  name  or  on  sight  the 
136 


insects  that  fill  the  summer  night  with  A  MESSAGE 
melody  ?  Do  we  know  whether  the  katy-  TO  GARCIA 
did,  cricket  and  locust  "  sing"  with  mouth, 
wings  or  feet?  Do  we  know  what  they 
feed  upon,  how  long  they  live,  and  what 
becomes  of  the  tree-toad  in  winter  ? 
I  wonder  what  it  is  to  be  educated !  Here 
was  a  man  seemingly  sore  smitten  by  the 
hand  of  Fate,  and  yet  whose  heart  was 
filled  with  sympathy  and  love.  He  had  no 
quarrel  with  either  the  world  or  Destiny. 
He  was  childless  that  he  might  love  all 
children,  and  that  his  heart  might  go  out 
to  every  living  thing.  The  trustees  of  the 
school  did  not  take  much  interest  in  the 
curriculum,  I  found,  so  they  let  the  teacher 
have  his  way.  A  collection  of  birds'  eggs, 
fungi  and  forest  leaves  had  been  made, 
and  I  was  shown  outline  drawings  of  all 
the  leaves  in  the  garden.  This  idea  of 
drawing  a  picture  of  the  object  led  to  a 
closer  observation,  the  teacher  thought. 
And  when  I  found  on  questioning  some  of 
the  children,  that  the  whole  school  took 
semi-weekly  rambles  through  the  woods, 
and  made  close  studies  of  the  wild  birds, 
as  well  as  insects,  it  came  to  me  that  this 
man,  far  from  any  "  intellectual  center," 

137 


A  MESSAGE  was  working  out  a  pedagogic  system  that 
TO  GARCIA  science  could  never  improve  upon.  Now 
whether  the  little  man  realized  this  or  not 
I  cannot  say,  but  I  do  not  think  he  guessed 
the  greatness  of  his  work  and  methods. 
It  was  all  so  simple — he  did  the  thing  he 
liked  to  do,  and  led  the  children  out,  and 
they  followed  because  they  loved  the  man 
and  soon  loved  the  things  that  he  loved. 
$f  Science  seeks  to  simplify.  This  country 
school  teacher,  doing  his  own  little  work 
in  his  own  little  way,  was  a  true  scientist. 
And  in  the  presence  of  such  a  man  should 
we  not  uncover  ? 

The  success  of  an  individual  is  usually 
damnation  for  his  children.  Luxury  ener 
vates  and  kills,  and  this  is  the  reason  that 
the  race  has  made  such  slow  and  painful 
progress.  All  one  generation  gains  is  lost 
in  the  next.  The  great  nations  have  died 
off  from  the  earth  simply  because  they 
succeeded.  The  grandeur  that  was  Greece 
and  the  glory  that  was  Rome  are  but 
names  writ  in  water.  The  splendours  of 
Spain  and  Italy  are  crumbling  into  dust. 
Whether  France  and  England  have  not 
expressed  their  best  is  a  question — nations 
like  families  die  the  death  and  they  die 

138 


because   they  win  £T  Institutions  similar  A  MESSAGE 
to  the  Dewey  School  are  attempts  to  hold  TO  GARCIA 
the  ground  once  gained,  and  as  such  they 
should  command  the  earnest  considera 
tion  and  respect  of  every  man  who  knows 
history  and  who  realizes  that  the  progress 
of  civilization  has  been  only  a  repetition  of 
the  labor  of  Sisyphus. 
We   grow  strong  through   doing  things 
And  when  one  generation  comes  into  pos 
session  of  the  material  good  that  the  for 
mer  generation  has  gained,  and  makes  that 
fool  remark,  "  I  do  n't  have  to  work,"  it 
straightway  is  stepping  on  the  chute  that 
gives  it  a  slide  to  Avernus — and  then  all 
has  to  be  done  over  again. 
I   expect  to  see    the    day    when    school 
teachers  will  not  be  supplied  a  beautiful 
scarcity  of  everything  but  hard  work. 
I  expect  to  see  the  day  when  no  school 
teacher  will  have  more  than  twenty  pupils. 
jf  I  expect  to  see  the  day  when  the  hon 
ors  and  compensation  of  school  teaching 
will  command  the  services  of  the   best 
and  strongest  men  and  women  in  every 
community  jf 

I  expect  to  see  the  day  when  the  conver 
sational  method    will    be   supreme,   and 

139 


A  MESSAGE  teaching  will  be  done  practically  without 
TO  GARCIA  books — by  object  lessons,  thinking  things 
out  and  doing  things. 
I  expect  to  see  the  day  when  overwrought 
nerves  in  teacher  or  pupil  will  be  un 
known,  for  joy  will  take  the  place  of 
anxiety,  and  all  the  bugaboo  of  "exams " 
will  be  consigned  to  limbo.  The  evolution 
even  now  is  at  work,  and  the  time  is  ripe. 
The  beauty  seen  in  all  school  rooms,  and 
the  reaching  out  for  harmony  are  not  in 
vain.  These  things  are  bearing  fruit. 
This  is  the  richest  country  the  world  has 
ever  known.  We  are  loaning  money  to 
Europe — and  ideas,  too.  We  spend  a  sum 
total  in  America  of  two  hundred  million 
dollars  a  year  for  the  support  of  our  pub 
lic  schools.  Yet  we  raised  a  like  sum  last 
year  for  war  and  fighting  machines,  and 
no  one  lifted  an  eyebrow,  except  a  few 
cranks  around  Boston  and  a  man  in 
Nebraska  $f 

Now  suppose  that  we  awaken  to  the  truth 
that  war  is  waste,  and  worse, — that  we 
stand  in  no  danger  and  need  few  soldiers, 
and  that  we  would  better  educate  our 
boys  and  girls  at  home  than  indulge  in 
doubtful  Old  World  experiments — then 
140 


what  !  Why,  we  '11  reduce  our  fighting  A  MESSAGE 
force  and  use  the  money  to  increase  the  TO  GARCIA 
efficiency  of  our  teaching  force.  We  will 
let  children  grow  strong  and  unfold 
through  doing  things  and  talking  about 
them  as  they  do  them,  and  pupils  and 
teacher  will  grow  strong  together.  We  will 
do  away  with  truancy,  trampism,  hood- 
lumism  and  lessen  crime  by  nine-tenths. 
We  will  not  suppress  bad  or  restless  boys, 
we  will  divert  them  and  direct  their  ener 
gies  into  paths  of  usefulness.  And  the  day 
is  coming  $f 

For  these  thoughts  are  not  my  thoughts. 
They  are  in  the  hearts  of  thousands  in 
every  city,  town,  hamlet  and  village — east 
or  west,  north  or  south — it  's  just  God's 
truth  $T 

And  when  enough  people  arrive  at 
Truth,  and  realize  that  every  day  is  Judg 
ment  Day,  and  the  important  place  is 
Here,  and  the  time  is  Now,  then  we  will 
work  for  a  present  good,  and  educate,  not 
kill ;  love,  not  hate ;  and  the  men  and 
women  who  educate  most  and  best  shall 
be  honored  most.  The  Day  is  dawning  in 
the  East  & 


141 


THE  BETTER 
PART 


AM  an  Anarchist  jf 
All  good  men  are  An 
archists. 

All  cultured  and  kindly 
men ;  all  gentle  men ;  all 
just  men  are  Anarchists. 
5J5T  Jesus  was  an  Anarch 
ist. 

A  Monarchist  is  one  who  believes  a  mon 
arch  should  govern.  A  Plutocrat  believes 
in  the  rule  of  the  rich.  A  Democrat  holds 
that  the  majority  should  dictate.  An  Aris 
tocrat  thinks  only  the  wise  should  decide ; 
while  an  Anarchist  does  not  believe  in 
government  at  all. 

Richard  Croker  is  a  Monarchist;  Mark 
Hanna  is  a  Plutocrat ;  Cleveland  a  Demo 
crat  ;  Cabot  Lodge  an  Aristocrat ;  William 
Penn,  Henry  D.  Thoreau,  Bronson  Alcott 
and  Walt  Whitman  were  Anarchists. 
An  Anarchist  is  one  who  minds  his  own 
business.  An  Anarchist  does  not  believe 
in  sending  war  ships  across  wide  oceans 
to  kill  brown  men,  and  lay  waste  rice 
fields,  and  burn  the  homes  of  people  who 
are  fighting  for  liberty.  An  Anarchist  does 
not  drive  women  with  babes  at  the  breast 
and  other  women  with  babes  unborn, 

147 


A  MESSAGE 
TO  GARCIA 


A  MESSAGE  children  and  old  men  into  the  jungle  to  be 
TO  GARCIA  devoured  by  beasts  or  fever  or  fear,  or  die 
of    hunger,    homeless,    unhouseled    and 
undone  Jf 

Destruction,  violence,  ravages  and  murder 
are  perpetrated  by  statute  law.  Without 
law  there  would  be  no  infernal  machines, 
no  war  ships,  no  dynamite  guns,  no  flat- 
nosed  bullets,  no  pointed  cartridges,  no 
bayonets,  no  policemen's  billies,  no  night 
sticks,  no  come-alongs,  no  handcuffs,  no 
straight  jackets,  no  dark  cells,  no  gallows, 
no  prison  walls  to  conceal  the  infamies 
therein  inflicted.  Without  law  no  little 
souls  fresh  from  God  would  be  branded 
"  illegitimate  "  indelibly  as  soon  as  they 
reach  Earth.  Without  law  there  would  be 
less  liars,  no  lawyers,  fewer  hypocrites 
and  no  Devil's  Island. 

The  Cry  of  the  Little  Peoples  goes  up  to  God 

in  vain, 
For  the  world  is  given  over  to  the  cruel  sons  of 

Cain ; 
The  hand  that  would  bless  us  is  weak,  and  the 

hand  that  would  break  us  is  strong, 
And  the  power  of  pity  is  naught  but  the  power 

of  a  song. 
The  dreams  that  our  fathers  dreamed  to-day  are 

laughter  and  dust, 
148 


And  nothing  at  all  in  the  world  is  left  for  a  man   A  MESSAGE 

to  trust.  TO  GARCIA 

Let  us  hope  no  more,  nor  dream,  nor  prophesy, 

nor  pray, 
For  the  iron  world  no  less  will  crash  on  its  iron 

way; 
And  nothing  is  left  but  to  watch,  with  a  helpless 

pitying  eye, 
The   kind  old  aims  for  the  world,  and  the  kind 

old  fashions  die. 

I  do  not  go  quite  so  far  as  that — I  'm  a 
pessimistic-optimist,  Dearie,  —  I  believe 
that  brutality  tends  to  defeat  itself.  Prize 
fighters  die  young,  gourmands  get  the 
gout,  hate  hurts  worse  the  man  who  nurses 
it,  and  all  selfishness  robs  the  mind  of  its 
divine  insight  and  cheats  the  soul  that 
would  know.  Mind  alone  is  eternal !  He, 
watching  over  Israel,  slumbers  not  nor 
sleeps.  My  faith  is  great :  out  of  the  tran 
sient  darkness  of  the  present  the  shadows 
will  flee  away,  and  Day  will  yet  dawn. 
I  am  an  Anarchist. 

No  man  who  believes  in  force  and  vio 
lence  is  an  Anarchist.  The  true  Anarchist 
decries  all  influences  save  those  of  love 
and  reason.  Ideas  are  his  only  arms. 
Being  an  Anarchist  I  am  also  a  Socialist. 
Socialism  is  the  antithesis  of  Anarchy. 

149 


A  MESSAGE  One  is  the  North  Pole  of  Truth,  the  other 
TO  GARCIA  the  South.  The  Socialist  believes  in  work 
ing  for  the  good  of  all,  while  Anarchy  is 
pure  Individualism.  I  believe  in  every 
man  working  for  the  good  of  self ;  and  in 
working  for  the  good  of  self,  he  works  for 
the  good  of  all.  To  think,  to  see,  to  feel, 
to  know ;  to  deal  justly  ;  to  bear  all  pa 
tiently  ;  to  act  quietly ;  to  speak  cheerfully ; 
to  moderate  one's  voice — these  things  will 
bring  you  the  highest  good.  They  will 
bring  you  the  love  of  the  best  and  the 
esteem  of  that  Sacred  Few  whose  good 
opinion  alone  is  worth  cultivating.  And 
further  than  this,  it  is  the  best  way  you 
can  serve  Society — live  your  life.  The  wise 
way  to  benefit  humanity  is  to  attend  to 
your  own  affairs,  and  thus  give  other  peo 
ple  an  opportunity  to  look  after  theirs. 
If  there  is  any  better  way  to  teach  virtue 
than  by  practicing  it,  I  do  not  know  it. 
Would  you  make  men  better — set  them 
an  example  3f 

The  Millennium  will  never  come  until 
governments  cease  from  governing,  and 
the  meddler  is  at  rest.  Politicians  are  men 
who  volunteer  the  task  of  governing  us 
for  a  consideration.  The  political  boss  is 
150 


intent  on  living  off  your  labor.  A  man  may  A  MESSAGE 
seek  an  office  in  order  to  do  away  with  TO  GARCIA 
the  rascal  who  now  occupies  it,  but  for  the 
most  part  office-seekers  are  rank  rogues. 
Shakespeare  uses  the  word  politician  five 
times,  and  each  time  it  is  synonymous 
with  knave.  That  is  to  say,  a  politician  is 
one  who  sacrifices  truth  and  honor  for  pol 
icy.  The  highest  motive  of  his  life  is 
expediency — policy.  In  King  Lear  it  is  the 
"scurvy  politician,"  who  through  tattered 
clothes  beholds  small  vices,  while  robes 
and  furred  gowns,  for  him,  cover  all. 
Europe  is  divided  up  between  eight  great 
governments,  and  in  time  of  peace  over 
three  million  men  are  taken  from  the  ranks 
of  industry  and  are  under  arms,  not  to 
protect  the  people,  but  to  protect  one  gov 
ernment  from  another. 
Mankind  is  governed  by  the  worst — the 
strongest  example  of  this  is  to  be  seen  in 
American  municipalities,  but  it  is  true  of 
every  government  &* 

We  are  governed  by  rogues  who  hold 
their  grip  upon  us  by  and  through  statute 
law.  Were  it  not  for  law  the  people  could 
protect  themselves  against  these  thieves, 
but  now  we  are  powerless  and  are  robbed 


A  MESSAGE  legally  5^  One  mild  form  of  coercion  these 
TO  GARCIA  rogues  resort  to,  is  to  call  us  unpatriotic 
when  we  speak  the  truth  about  them.  Not 
long  ago  they  would  have  cut  off  our 
heads.  The  world  moves. 
Governments  cannot  be  done  away  with 
instantaneously,  but  progress  will  come, 
as  it  has  in  the  past,  by  lessening  the  num 
ber  of  laws.  We  want  less  governing,  and 
the  Ideal  Government  will  arrive  when 
there  is  no  government  at  all. 
So  long  as  governments  set  the  example  of 
killing  their  enemies,  private  individuals 
will  occasionally  kill  theirs. 
So  long  as  men  are  clubbed,  robbed, 
imprisoned,  disgraced,  hanged  by  the  gov 
erning  class,  just  so  long  will  the  idea  of 
violence  and  brutality  be  born  in  the  souls 
of  men  5^ 

Governments    imprison    men,   and    then 
hound  them  when  they  are  released. 
Hate  springs  eternal  in  the  human  breast. 
JT  And  hate  will  never  die  so  long  as  men 
are  taken  from  useful  production  on  the 
specious  plea  of  patriotism,  and  bayonets 
gleam  in  God's  pure  sunshine. 
And  the  worst  part  about  making  a  soldier 
of    a  man  is,   not  that  the   soldier  kills 
152 


brown  men  or  black  men  or  white  men,  A  MESSAGE 
but  it  is  that  the  soldier  loses  his  own  TO  GARCIA 
soul  s^ 

I  am  an  Anarchist. 

I  do  not  believe  in  bolts  or  bars  or  brutal 
ity.  I  make  my  appeal  to  the  Divinity  in 
men,  and  they,  in  some  mysterious  way, 
feeling  this,  do  not  fail  me. 
I  send  valuable  books,  without  question, 
on  a  postal  card  request,  to  every  part  of 
the  Earth  where  the  mail  can  carry  them, 
and  my  confidence  is  never  abused.  The 
Roycroft  Shop  is  never  locked,  employees 
and  visitors  come  and  go  at  pleasure,  and 
nothing  is  molested.  My  library  is  for 
anyone  who  cares  to  use  it. 
Out  in  the  great  world  women  occasion 
ally  walk  off  the  dock  in  the  darkness,  and 
then  struggle  for  life  in  the  deep  waters. 
Society  jigs  and  ambles  by,  with  a  coil  of 
rope,  but  before  throwing  it  demands  of 
the  sinking  one  a  certificate  of  character 
from  her  Pastor  or  a  letter  of  recommend 
ation  from  her  Sunday  School  Superin 
tendent,  or  a  testimonial  from  a  School 
Principal.  Not  being  &ble  to  produce  the 
document,  the  struggler  is  left  to  go  down 
to  her  death  in  the  darkness. 

153 


A  MESSAGE  A  so-called  "  bad  woman  "  is  usually  one 
TO  GARCIA  whose  soul  is  being  rent  in  an  awful  tra 
vail  of  prayer  to  God  that  she  may  get 
back  upon  solid  footing  and  lead  an  honest 
life.  Believing  this,  the  Roycroft  principle 
is  never  to  ask  for  such  a  preposterous 
thing  as  a  letter  of  recommendation  from 
anyone.  We  have  two  hundred  helpers, 
and  while  it  must  not  be  imagined  by  any 
means  that  we  operate  a  reform  school 
or  a  charitable  institution,  I  wish  to  say 
that  I  distinctly  and  positively  refuse  to 
discriminate  between  "  good  "  and  "  bad  " 
people.  I  will  not  condemn,  nor  for  an  in 
stant  imagine  that  it  is  my  duty  to  resolve 
myself  into  a  section  of  the  Day  of  Judg 
ment  & 

I  fix  my  thought  on  the  good  that  is  in 
every  soul  and  make  my  appeal  to  that. 
And  the  plan  is  a  wise  one,  judged  by  re 
sults.  It  secures  you  loyal  helpers,  worthy 
friends,  gets  the  work  done,  aids  digestion 
and  tends  to  sleep  o'  nights.  And  I  say  to 
you,  that  if  you  have  never  known  the 
love,  loyalty  and  integrity  of  a  proscribed 
person,  you  have  never  known  what  love, 
loyalty  and  integrity  are  &*  I  do  not  be 
lieve  in  governing  by  force,  or  threat,  or 

154 


any  other  form  of  coercion.  I  would  not  A  MESSAGE 
arouse    in    the    heart    of   any  of   God's  TO  GARCIA 
creatures  a  thought  of  fear,  or  discord,  or 
hate,  or  revenge.  I  will  influence  men,  if  I 
can,  but  it  shall  be  only  by  aiding  them  to 
think  for  themselves ;  and  so  mayhap,  they, 
of  their  own  accord,  will  choose  the  better 
part — the  ways  that  lead  to  life  and  light. 


155 


THE  CRYING 
NEED 


HE  Servant  Girl  is  a 
property  used  by  all 
humorists  in  Class  B ; 
and  the  troubles  of  the 
Mistress  are  a  recurring 
theme  in  every  club  and 
editorial  room. 
The  wailings  of  the 
Woman  who  has  employed  a  Cook-lady 
form  a  subdued  anvil  chorus  that  hums 
the  round  world  over  as  the  earth  re 
volves,  like  the  drum-taps  of  Great  Britain 
on  which  the  sun  never  sets — but  may. 
The  Woes  of  the  Mistress !  They  will 
never  down — and  as  a  topic  for  conversa 
tion  the  Servant  Girl  question  will  remain 
with  us  just  as  long  as  does  the  Servant 
Girl.  I  think,  however,  although  I  may  be 
all  wrong,  that  it  is  the  Mistress  that  needs 
reformation — not  the  Girl. 
The  Servant  Girl  system  draws  a  sharp 
line  of  demarcation  between  the  Girl  and 
the  Mistress.  The  Mistress  fights  to  keep 
the  line  more  deeply  etched — the  Girl 
strives  to  obliterate  it. 
And  the  Girl  will  win — and  some  day  I  '11 
tell  you  why. 

But  there   is  a   Chorus  of  Kickers  that 

161 


A  MESSAGE 
TO  GARCIA 


A  MESSAGE  growls  its  thunderous  bass  in  a  manner 
TO  GARCIA  just  as  pronounced  as  the  shrill  falsetto  of 
the  Amalgamated  Mistresses.  And  yet  no 
funny  man  has  ever  made  note  of  the  bass, 
while  the  soprano  is  worked  over-time  $? 
The  Kick  to  which  I  refer  is  the  wail  of 
every  man  who  operates  a  store,  shop, 
factory,  bank,  railroad  or  any  other  insti 
tution  that  employs  many  men. 
Every  Successful  Concern  is  the  result  of 
a  One-Man  Power.  Co-operation,  tech 
nically,  is  an  iridescent  dream  —  things 
co-operate  because  the  Man  makes  them. 
He  cements  them  by  his  will. 
But  find  this  Man,  and  get  his  confidence 
and  his  weary  eyes  will  look  into  yours 
and  the  cry  of  his  heart  shall  echo  in  your 
ears,  "  O  for  someone  to  help  me  bear  this 
burden !" 

Then  he  will  tell  you  of  his  endless  search 
for  Ability,  and  of  his  continual  disap 
pointments  and  thwartings  in  trying  to 
get  someone  to  help  himself  by  helping 
him  jf 

Ability  is  the  one  crying  need  of  the  hour. 
jf  The  banks  ace  bulging  with  money, 
everywhere  are  men  wanting  work.  The 
harvest  is  ripe. 
162 


But  the  Ability  to  captain  the  unemployed  A  MESSAGE 
and  utilize  the  capital  is  lacking — sadly  TO  GARCIA 
lacking  Jf 

In  every  city  there  are  dozens  of  five  and 
ten  thousand  dollar  a  year  positions  to  be 
filled,  but  the  only  applicants  are  men  who 
want  a  job  at  fifteen  dollars  a  week.  Your 
man  of  Ability  has  a  place  already. 
Yes,  Ability  is  a  rare  article. 
But  there  is  something  that  is  much  more 
scarce,    something    finer    far,   something 
rarer  than  Ability. 
It  is  the  Ability  to  recognize  Ability. 
The  sternest  comment  that  can  be  made 
against  employers  as  a  class  lies  in  the 
fact  that  men  of  Ability  usually  succeed 
in  showing  their  worth  in  spite  of  their 
employer,  and  not  with  his  assistance  and 
encouragement  $T 

If  you  know  the  lives  of  men  of  Ability, 
you  know  that  they  discovered  their 
power,  almost  without  exception,  through 
accident.  Had  the  accident  not  occurred 
that  made  the  opportunity,  the  man  would 
have  been  practically  lost  to  the  world  $f 
The  experience  of  Tom  Potter,  the  tele 
graph  operator,  at  an  obscure  little  way 
station,  is  truth  painted  large.  That  fearful 

163 


A  MESSAGE  night,  when  most  of  the  wires  were  down 
TO  GARCIA  and  a  passenger  train  went  through  the 
bridge,  gave  Tom  Potter  the  opportunity 
of  discovering  himself.  He  took  charge  of 
the  dead,  cared  for  the  wounded,  settled 
fifty  claims — drawing  drafts  on  the  com 
pany — burned  the  last  vestige  of  the 
wreck,  sunk  the  waste  iron  in  the  river 
and  repaired  the  bridge  before  the  Super 
intendent  arrived  on  the  spot. 
"  Who  gave  you  authority  to  do  all  this  ?  " 
demanded  the  Superintendent. 
"Nobody,"  said  Tom,  "I  assumed  the 
authority." 

The  next  month  Tom  Potter's  salary  was 
$5,000  a  year,  and  in  three  years  he  was 
making  ten  times  this,  simply  because  he 
could  get  other  men  to  do  things. 
Why  wait  for  an  accident  to  discover 
Tom  Potter?  Let  us  set  traps  for  Tom 
Potter,  and  lie  in  wait  for  him.  Perhaps 
Tom  Potter  is  just  around  the  corner, 
across  the  street,  in  the  next  room,  or  at 
our  elbow ! 

I  know  a  man  who  roamed  the  woods  and 
fields  for  thirty  years  and  never  found  an 
Indian  arrow.  One  day  he  began  to  think 
"  arrow,"  and  stepping  out  of  his  doorway 
164 


he  picked  one  up.  Since  then  he  has  col-  A  MESSAGE 
lected  a  bushel.  TO  GARCIA 

Suppose  we  cease  wailing  about  incom 
petence,  sleepy  indifference  and  slip-shod 
"  help "  that  watches  the  clock.  These 
things  exist — let  us  dispose  of  the  subject 
by  admitting  it,  and  then  emphasize  the 
fact  that  freckled  farmer  boys  come  out 
of  the  West  and  East  and  often  go  to  the 
front  and  do  things  in  a  masterly  way  $f 
There  is  one  name  that  stands  out  in  his 
tory  like  a  beacon  light  after  all  these 
twenty-five  hundred  years  have  passed, 
just  because  the  man  had  the  sublime 
Genius  of  discovering  Ability. 
That  man  is  Pericles. 
Pericles  made  Athens. 
And  to-day  the  very  dust  of  the  streets  of 
Athens  is  being  sifted  and  searched  for 
relics  and  remnants  of  the  things  made  by 
people  who  were  captained  by  men  of 
Ability  who  were  discovered  by  Pericles. 
<&  There  is  little  competition  in  this  line  of 
discovering  Ability.  We  sit  down  and 
wail  because  Ability  does  not  come  our 
way  & 

Let  us  think  "Ability"  and  possibly  we 
can  jostle  Pericles  there  on  his  pedestal, 

165 


A  MESSAGE  where  he  has  stood  for  over  a  score  of 
TO  GARCIA  centuries — the  man  with  a  supreme  Gen 
ius  for  recognizing  Ability  $f  Hail  to  thee, 
Pericles,  and  hail  to  thee,  Great  Unknown, 
who  shall  first  successfully  imitate  him  ! 


166 


SO  HERE  ENDETH  THE  GOODLY  BOOK 
ENTITLED  »  A  MESSAGE  TO  GARCIA  AND 
THIRTEEN  OTHER  THINGS,"  AS  WRIT 
TEN  BY  FRA  ELBERTUS,  AND  DONE  INTO 
PRINT  BY  THE  ROYCROFTERS  AT  THEIR 
SHOP,  WHICH  IS  IN  EAST  AURORA  &  & 


MM.WALS  "f^s^Stow.* 

rSssssa^ 


1 1976  o   • 


LD  2lA-40m-2,'69 
J6057slO)476— A-32 


(J60 


